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Dodie Dunson leaving Iowa State

chitownBUB said:
Here is an interesting quote from an article about Dunson's departure.
"His departure leaves Iowa State with no active scholarship guards on the roster with Division I experience. Corey McIntosh has left Iowa State and transferred to Augustana of South Dakota for his final season of eligibility. Another guard, Michael Taylor, remains suspended from the team indefinitely."

Wow, not one single guard on the active roster with D-I experience. Might be a tough season.
Click to expand...

Taylor will be reinstated barring another boneheaded screw up. We did lose McIntosh and Dunson, but the two combined for 9.6 points and 3.5 assists and 2.8 turnovers in 46.4 minutes. Not exactly irreplaceable numbers from two players that made up two-thirds of our scholarship guards last year. We will have four new scholarship guards as well as two junior college players that are walking on that have solid credentials and turned down D1 scholarships to come to ISU as walk ons. We WILL be starting a freshman at point guard the entire year. We will not have a ton of experience in the guard court, but we do return four starters and so this year cannot hardly be rougher than last year! :D
 
PTTB-

I found a couple links...

Kerwin Dunham was offered in June of 2004, right after he finished his sophomore season.
http://www.klem1410.com/NewsDetail11.cfm?Id=30,4262
He had not been previously recruited by McDermott and from the articles I saw, he hadn't even been seen prior to getting the scholarship at a camp at UNI.
In the end, He won't play a minute of ball at UNI until fall of 2007, so that scholarship was indeed committed 3 years before the kid actually played.
Dunham was indeed totally surprised to get a full D-I scholarship offer from a coach who was NOT recruiting him.
http://www.panthernation.com/showthread.php?t=218

Eglseder did get offered before playing any HS ball.

and I had some references about McD not seeing the Germans and only relying on other scouting reports, but those links go to dry pages.


My point is that he is really trying hard to keep the recruiting budget down by handing out scholarships early, but it's a real risk, that's all.
Of Eglseder, Dunham, Davis, Polakovic, Raffington none has paid off even tho those scholarships have been committed for 2-3+ years each....taking away other opportunities to use them, and I think it's a fair statement that only Eglseder offers much promise.

Of the very few examples you can possibly find of a D-I coach offering a freshman, McDermott has done it at least 3 different times, now. And even offering kids after their sophomore seasons, when he sees them at a summer camp, is sorta the same thing. In the end, only a small pct. of those recurits panned out, so I think it is very risky to be offering that early.

Even if you count Eglseder as a success, then such a success is lessened a bit by the fact that he never did play for McDermott, because the interval time was so long that Greg was gone by the time Jordan got there.
So in the end result....NOT ONE of those early offers ended up playing for McDermott, so an effective success rate of zero!

People raised their eyebrows when Bruce Weber offered to Jereme Richmond, a freshman.
It was indeed unusual, but then, Richmond was and IS the top rated kid in his class in Illinois.
When McD offered Eglseder and Dykstra and the other kid, they are completely unknown.....they are NOT top rated....so it seems like such a risk.
 
PTTB if you're still in on this thread, I now have another example.

Iowa State head coach Greg McDermott had offered a scholarship to yet another freshman who has only played a minimum of varsity ball.
6-4, 160 lb. Harrison Barnes...offered in early May of his freshman year.
http://iowapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=978&CID=672383


what's even more odd is this statement, after the kid got a second scholarship offer:

"Indiana State offered me a full ride scholarship. I spoke on the phone with Coach Lansing and he said that he liked the way I played and that he wants me to play for them"
http://iowapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?cid=682086

What's odd is that the NCAA rules prohibit any direct contact with recruits prior to their junior year, and ABSOLUTELY NO PHONE CALLS prior to June 15 after their sophomore season.

Here is the link to the rule:
"Telephone calls once per month following sophomore year"
http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/membership_svcs/recruiting_calendars/2006-07/DI_MBB.pdf

"No recruiting materials or telephone contact prior to June 15 following sophomore year"
http://www1.ncaa.org/membership/membership_svcs/recruiting_calendars/2006-07/recruitingchart.pdf

"College coach cannot call you (recruit) prior to June 15 following sophomore year."
http://www.ncaa.org/library/general/cbsa/2006-07/2006-07_cbsa.pdf

Hmmm........
 
tornado said:
PTTB if you're still in on this thread, I now have another example.

Iowa State head coach Greg McDermott had offered a scholarship to yet another freshman who has only played a minimum of varsity ball.
6-4, 160 lb. Harrison Barnes...offered in early May of his freshman year.
http://iowapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=978&CID=672383
Click to expand...

Barnes plays in the summer league here in Des Moines.....I'm pretty sure I saw him arrive with one of the ISU assistant coaches....FWIW, that assistant is on the same summer league team as he is.

Actually, Iowa State has two assistant coaches playing in the league here, which gives them all kinds of chances to contact potentital recruits during "dead" times.
 
DUBulldog said:
tornado said:
PTTB if you're still in on this thread, I now have another example.

Iowa State head coach Greg McDermott had offered a scholarship to yet another freshman who has only played a minimum of varsity ball.
6-4, 160 lb. Harrison Barnes...offered in early May of his freshman year.
http://iowapreps.rivals.com/content.asp?SID=978&CID=672383
Click to expand...

Barnes plays in the summer league here in Des Moines.....I'm pretty sure I saw him arrive with one of the ISU assistant coaches....FWIW, that assistant is on the same summer league team as he is.

Actually, Iowa State has two assistant coaches playing in the league here, which gives them all kinds of chances to contact potentital recruits during "dead" times.
Click to expand...

tornado-

The offer about Barnes is older news. Here is what I said about a month ago on his offer (a couple replies ago):

As for Mac's recruiting at ISU, I can't really speak for that. FWIW, Barnes (the recent kid with an offer) played varsity this past year at Ames HS, so he would have had a chance to see him play. Also, this is the same class as Mac's youngest son, Doug. I'm sure Mac has been able to see Dykstra play on Doug's AAU team (Martin Brothers) and Barnes (his HS team).

I can't say that he saw them play though.
Click to expand...

As for Indiana State offering him via the phone, the article states that his HS coach told him to call InSU b/c they had an offer, so the kid called InSU. Can a kid call coaches? I thought so, but maybe I misunderstand the rule.

DUBulldog-
I don't see any of ISU's assistant coaches on the Capitol City rosters. I see Erik Crawford and Erik Henderson (both graduate managers). Did I miss someone? I don't know what the rules are in regards to managers having contact/riding with potential recruits. Did you see them get out of the same car or just walk in together? Just asking.
 
PTTB said:
DUBulldog-
I don't see any of ISU's assistant coaches on the Capitol City rosters. I see Erik Crawford and Erik Henderson (both graduate managers). Did I miss someone?
Click to expand...

My bad....I knew they were both on staff at Iowa State...guess I just assumed they were coaches.

I don't know what the rules are in regards to managers having contact/riding with potential recruits. Did you see them get out of the same car or just walk in together? Just asking.
Click to expand...

I saw them walk in together....quite honestly, I didn't know who either one of them was until I saw them play.
 
I have now seen both Barnes and Dykstra play and if Barnes joins Dykstra at ISU, I will be a VERY happy camper. Dykstra has a great build and great skills for a soph to be and Barnes may be even better. These two are studs and young or not I cannot blame Greg for wanting to get them wrapped up early.
 
PTTB said:
tornado-

The offer about Barnes is older news. ....
Click to expand...

I know, but as I pointed out elsewhere, I did a pretty exhaustive search for all the examples of a coach offering a kid while still a freshman or earlier, and the kid accepting.
It is in the thread about the Aurora, Illinois 8th grade kid verballing to USC.
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=55620#55620

I found only a total of only 17 such examples, and to date only ONE of those kids (And even that kid (Nic Wise) turned out to be a dud and was booted off the team for academics) has ever played even ONE game for the coach that recruited him!!, several never will even in the future as they have now decommitted, and of the rest only a few even have a solid chance of ever being worth the investment of a scholarship so early!

BUT, as noted McDermott has done it more than any coach has. The point I made in one of the other threads was that so many of those really young recruits and early offers over the years that McDermott has made backfired. None of those he offers at UNI before their junior year ever played one game for him. But he continues to do it.
Way back 3 years ago when Greg was giving scholarships to Anthony Davis, Kerwin Dunham, Jermaine Raffington, and others he had never seen play a game, I predicted this ploy would backfire.
Now 3 years later, the evidence confirms it, as McDermott's UNI teams were good, but they always faded mightily down the stretch and in the postseason because of lack of depth and playing too many minutes with just 5 starters. I think he spent too much time seeking and recruiting kids who were 4 years away and failed to stock the team with kids that could come and help while he was there. And he's doing the same thing now, as those kids who are 4-5 years away are really risky investments.
Just check the info on Nic Wise....
 
tornado-

I understand your thoughts on Mac offering kids early...regardless of the fact that I don't necessarily agree that the institution benefited/weren't harmed from those early commits. My comment had nothing to do with that.

I just thought it was odd that the topic was resurrected after this ISU offer we had already discussed became 'PTTB if you're still in on this thread, I now have another example.' My comment was just a reminder that it had been talked about before, I just didn't know why it was being brought up again after it had been talked about at length. The stuff about the Indiana State offer/call was new stuff, which was good to know.
 
tornado said:
........ a scholarship so early!.......

BUT, as noted McDermott has done it more than any coach .....
Click to expand...


according to Daniel Poneman Iowa State has now offered a scholarship to Lavonte Dority, another kid who is just completed his freshman season.
 
So Dunson is going to Vincennes JC, Mike Taylor has not yet said what he's going to do,
either go D-II so he can play college ball or go to Europe and play pro ball.
Also Corey McIntosh left, and Ross Marsden also lef the team.

This is an interesting thread about Greg McDermott's recruiting,
but one thing cannot be denied. He has only been at Iowa State for one year
and three of his own recruits AT Iowa State are already gone, booted, dismissed, or flunked out.
In fact, the very first three he got committments from are all history....in less than one year.
He also lost several other commits when he arrived (one was Jeremy Fears).
Most coaches when they are new hires, lose some of what they inherit in the cupboard, but
the startling thing is that McDermott loses all the ones he recruited himself, so
that is not very comforting to the Cyclone Nation.
 
I went looking for a story to help me understand why those players all left, and am left wondering.
This article says
"McDermott - cut Taylor - his best player - loose anyway. You don't have to like it. But you have to respect it.
Many coaches, especially young ones, would be afraid. Afraid of losing their meal ticket.
They'd scramble for a loophole. They'd tell the media and the public that they had their player's back, always, no matter what.
McDermott stood his ground. He kept his feet on the high road and walked away."

But they detail all the times Taylor committed violations and McDermott looked the other way and did not do a thing.
By this article's count, he had legal runins in Feb, April, June, and then academic issues, but he also had issues last fall that led to a suspension of a preseason game.
So I would hardly call McDermott the model for strong discipline as this story seems to portray him.
Seems like it took five swings to hit this one on the head finally, and dismiss the guy. He whiffed the other four times he had the chance to "stand his ground".
http://desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070720/SPORTS05/707200417/-1/SPORTS06
 
Let's go over the losses:

Mike Taylor was dismissed from the team. He should have been dismissed last season after a series of infractions but Coach Mac covered a lot up.

Ross Marsden decided to forego basketball for the rest of his career.

Corey McIntosh left because he felt Coach Mac played favorites and had a double standard.

Dodie Dunson was completely eligible for next season and never flunked out (as many think he did) but decided to attend a JC as he struggled big time academically.
 
tornado said:
So Dunson is going to Vincennes JC, Mike Taylor has not yet said what he's going to do,
either go D-II so he can play college ball or go to Europe and play pro ball.
Also Corey McIntosh left, and Ross Marsden also lef the team.

This is an interesting thread about Greg McDermott's recruiting,
but one thing cannot be denied. He has only been at Iowa State for one year
and three of his own recruits AT Iowa State are already gone, booted, dismissed, or flunked out.
In fact, the very first three he got committments from are all history....in less than one year.
He also lost several other commits when he arrived (one was Jeremy Fears).
Most coaches when they are new hires, lose some of what they inherit in the cupboard, but
the startling thing is that McDermott loses all the ones he recruited himself, so
that is not very comforting to the Cyclone Nation.
Click to expand...

I find it very interesting that it seems Bradley fans are more concerned about McDermott's recruiting thatn Cyclone fans! :D

McDermott did lose three of his five recruts from last year in McIntosh, Taylor and Dunson. Those three recruits were signed in two weeks after Greg was hired. He had little to no time to evaluate and be picky. He had zero, I repeat, ZERO guards on his roster and had to find whatever he could to attempt to field a team last year. He signed the best players he could and they did not work out.

Dunson has a learning disability and struggled at ISU. Taylor was an idiot. McIntosh was a quality young man, but he was not a Big 12 caliber guard as we were forced to play Taylor at point guard becuase Corey could not create anything. These were your typical spring recruits. They were all still available because they had character issues, acdemic issues or just were not that talented. I personally would love to have all three on the roster this year as I think Corey and Dodie were great young men and Taylor was obviously talented, but I will lose no sleep that they are gone.

If Greg's first full class that he had ample time to evaluate and recruit falls on it's face and all are a bust, then I will be concerned. As it is, I feel very positive about the future of the program.
 
Thank you FarmerClone, you have just helped support my argument that PTTB and I were disagreeing on.
(see posts on last page of this thread)
I have said that Greg McDermott seems to offer full scholarships to kids he has never seen play and to kids he has seen so very little that he cannot possibly know enough to have a good feel, and that a disproportionate number of those recruits never pan out.
You can add McIntosh, Taylor, Dunson to the list I gave on the last page of Davis, Polokovic, Raffington, Dunham, Stewart, Davis, Stephen Jones, Dylan Grimsley, etc.
Seems you have done a good job of helping prove my point.
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=53736#53736
 
tornado-

I don't think this is a fair comparison. Mac got the job and had two weeks until signing day to gather a staff, go recruiting, and assemble a team. He was pretty much all done recruiting at UNI when he left to take the IoSU job. So, what is he suppose to do when there are ZERO guards coming back (Blaylock/Stinson going pro, Fears transferring out, and other incoming guard recruits leaving due to Morgan leaving). There was only walk-ons Brock Jacobson, Chris Ceasar, and Mark Currie returning. Walk-ons...no scholarship players. He had 4 returning scholarship players in total. 4....4....4 (we get it? 4). And then has a firm commitment from the only midwest recruit signed by Morgan in Corey Johnson...again, not a guard.

So, he has 8 scholarships to use and future APR restrictions coming down the line. What does he do? He takes the scholy restrictions the first year...that cut 2-3 scholys I believe. That leaves 5 scholarships to offer. Who does he go after?

1. Mike Taylor---yes, he may have been the best available guard in the country...but that was for a reason...he had some character/grade issues before. Who was his coach his first year at Chipola? Assistant coach TJ Otzelburger. I'm pretty sure he saw him play.

2. Dodie Dunson---Mac had seen him play. They were actively recruiting him to UNI while at both Bloomington and Brewster. Mac says he was watching him over both those tenures:
http://www.cyclones.com/ViewArticle.dbml?SPSID=46661&SPID=4252&DB_OEM_ID=10700&ATCLID=831381
"We have followed and recruited Dodie the past few years at both Bloomington H.S. under coach Ron Rose and at Brewster Academy coached by Jason Smith."

3. Corey McIntosh---the California Junior College Player of the Year...I admit, I'm sure Mac had not seen him play besides on some film. He probably went with information from assistant TJ Otzelburger...who that year had been working out in California.

4. Wesley Johnson---he was a SF that was recruited by assistant coach Jean Prilou at Wichita State (from other stories I have read). Wesley signed with UL-Lafayette I believe, but then decided to go to prep school in Michigan. This prep school folded halfway through the year, and he never got to play ball. Everyone had forgotten about him, until they got a phone call from his prep school coach and recommended that they give him a shot. With an open scholy, not much film, and probably an open gym look at him, they gave him that shot. That one totally fell in their laps. He was the best recruit out of all of them last year as he started 30 of 31 games.

5. Alex Thompson---transferred from Iowa back to his home town of Ames to play. It's unsure whether he has a scholarship or not. Farmer could probably answer that better than I could. I believe that Alex was offered a scholarship by Mac while at UNI.

So, Mac got 3 guards on scholarship. 1 he had seen. And 2 he hadn't see play much (probably just open gyms), but probably went on 1st hand observations of at least one of his assistants (who had coached one of them for a year). The other (Wesley Johnson) was a total 'drop in the lap'...and you can put him for sure in the list of players who didn't get many looks in game time situations. But, starting 30 of 31 games is probably far from not 'panning out'.

So, we have debated the UNI players (who I will no longer discuss, b/c we have debated it into the ground as far as I'm concerned), and I guess now the ISU players. I just don't think that we can hold Mac to the standard of seeing each player he signs in that class (in games, first hand) before signing them as all of those players' seasons were over when he got the job. His recruiting was pretty well all done at UNI. He wasn't recruiting Michigan or Texas or California while at UNI. He had 2 weeks until signing day to stock some guards (which he signed 3).

If Jim Les takes over Bradley with zero guards, two weeks until spring signing day, the recruits that were coming leaving b/c of the previous coach left (and other issues)....would you want him to hold off on signing players until he had seen them play in real games (basically the next season), play only walk-on guards in the MVC, and not rely on the knowledge and first hand accounts of his assistant coaches he put there...or would you rather him try to find some guards (whether seen or unseen by his eyes), rely on his assistant coaches, and dig for diamonds in the rough to fill out a 10 scholarship player team?

All this, knowing that the following year you have at least 3 scholarships to use (1 departing post player and 2-3 scholys back from the APR hits) on guys you can pretty well guarantee lots of playing time to. I guess that is why I don't think you can paint a broad brush with his time at UNI (which again we disagree on) and at ISU. They are all unique situations...same goes for his time at ISU.

Am I missing something here?
 
No, I think you are pretty much seeing what I am seeing.
He has offered numerous scholarhsips to kids he had only heard about, seen once at a summer camp, or had never seen them play varsity ball.
You don't seem to be denying that, and I am saying it is risky because so many of those players don't pan out.
Guess what, now enough time has gone by and the facts support me, as so many of those players he gave those scholarships to either never arrived or lasted less than a year.

I don't deny that it happens to most coaches, but only rarely to most while it has happened a ton to McDermott.
Of those 11 that I listed just above your post, only a couple ever played at all for Mac, and none lasted over a year.

Keep in mind that I noted McIntosh and Dunson were mid-major caliber and even predicted how this would turn out.
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3054
http://www.bradleyfans.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=4376
 
You seem to imply tornado that any coach worth a darn could have recruited a much better class in two weeks after being hired at a different school with ZERO scholarship guards to start with. List for me please the players Greg should have recruited and signed in two weeks last spring that would have had better results than McIntosh, Taylor and Dunson. I would wager your list would be very short and probably not be a realistic list. Greg did rely on his staff's evaluations to sign those players he signed and they were looked at as three of the top players available in the spring signing period and as you mentioned, McIntosh and Dunson were mid-level talent. But the fact is, they were the best talent available. He did the best he could and if the only player that stuck was a stud in Wes Johnson, so be it.
 
Yup, with the drawing power a Big XII school has, he could have done better.

Mizzou got UNANIMOUS BIG XII Newcomer of the Year, Stephon Hannah, recruited by brand new head coach (who had only been on the job a few weeks) Mike Anderson.

Mick Cronin at Cincy got several studs, including John Williamson and Marcus Sikes within the same time span McDermott was at ISU.

Marvin Kilgore went to UTEP, Takais Brown went to Georgia, James Davis had a great first year at Lamar, Cyrus Tate, Andre Smith, Lance Stemler, Anthony Slack, Matt Salley, and others were all good pickups during the late signing period, and turned out to be better than those guys who got booted at Iowa State.

Coming from Bradley, with the limited name recognition we have and conference affiliation, I have a really hard time feeling pity for the recruiting ability of a BIG STATE SCHOOL in the Big XII.
The point I made was that McD was giving out scholarships to kids that were obviously NOT BCS caliber, as I noted in my last post....I predicted they would not last and were midmajor caliber.
 
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