Once again Sean Miller has done it again!!!

[Russ Smith]

The big twist in all this is that Eric Cooper Sr played for Lute at UA so I'm sure he was pushing his son to attend UA but his son is just not as talented as most of the players Sean Miller is landing / recruiting.

Really bad scene playing out the way it did with GJ being the one who will suffer the consequences. I hope some team takes a chance on him in the second round unless he really impresses at the draft camps.

I feel sorry for Cooper Jr too. He was the top rated kid on the WC in 2013 entering HS. Less than a year later he wasn't even rated top 150 because he'd missed the last few weeks of his freshman year, essentially the whole AAU summer, and was 25 pounds heavier all due to knee problems that apparently were a side effect of a growth spurt.

I vividly remember the comments on him about a month before he committed to UA. Someone on BRO was listing the top prospects in the area by class and when they mentioned Cooper the comment was unfortunately he's not only not a top prospect right now he doesn't even appear to be a UCLA level prospect anymore due to his health problems and how his body has gone.

I am predicting he might end up at USC. Aunt coaches the womens team, new staff could make some good karma locally by taking the kid.

 

[Phrazbit]

If Gordon is anywhere near as good as advertised then this might be a good thing. Clears up a lot of minutes.

And I dont see how this is a poor reflection on Miller. Jerrett got some terrible advice. Even if he was promised more minutes then the right choice for him would be to transfer, virtually any school in the country would take him. Instead some greedy relative is putting him in an uphill battle to ever be a legit pro as his next destination is probably the D-League or Europe.

 

[Russ Smith]

If Gordon is anywhere near as good as advertised then this might be a good thing. Clears up a lot of minutes.

And I dont see how this is a poor reflection on Miller. Jerrett got some terrible advice. Even if he was promised more minutes then the right choice for him would be to transfer, virtually any school in the country would take him. Instead some greedy relative is putting him in an uphill battle to ever be a legit pro as his next destination is probably the D-League or Europe.

It would only reflect poorly on Miller in a couple of scenarios. If you believe that they did a package deal, which I do, and you don't like package deals, which frankly at this point are so prevalent I don't care, then it looks bad.

The other one is if he made promises to Jerrett he didn't keep. Or in this case maybe to Cooper Sr.

Miller is a terrific recruiter and UCLA fans have been pointing this out for 2 years now, it's remarkable how every kid that UA is recruiting says the same thing. I like the style of play that they play uptempo, they don't in fact no Miller coached team really has been "up tempo". And the other one that you hear over and over is Arizona has been recruiting me the hardest. At one point about a year ago I pointed that out on the Scout board for UA and someone said I was making it up. So I posted links to 5 separate kids, that all played the same position, and EVERY one of them said UA was recruiting them the hardest and or they were a priority for UA.

That's remarkable, 5 kids, same position, publicly stating they all think they're the priority for UA, at the same position. Clearly at least 4 of them were wrong and if they just read the same interviews I did they'd know that. But Miller and his staff are so good with these kids it hasn't hurt them at all to keep telling kids stuff like that.

Whereas a guy like howland has such huge personality issues that if he misleads a kid, he simply isn't savvy enough to overcome it.

People think i'm criticizing Miller when I say that but I'm not, the ability to do that and then be able to get the kid to not flip out later is a huge asset as a coach the way recruiting is these days. If you tell Aaron Gordon look you're not a 3 and you're definitely not a 2, you're not going to get him. And you wouldn't get Brandon Ashley by telling him he wasn't a 3 or get Jerrett by telling him he'd be playing minutes at backup 5. For the most part Miller has been able to do that and get by with it. In the case of Jerrett it appears he didn't, but Cooper is really the one who comes off looking bad IMO, as well as the agent.


With Howland over time it got to where nobody locally trusted him, apparently Kendall Williams was one of his early problems but there were many other cases to where AAU and HS coaches in LA simply didn't trust him. That's why he got fired, UCLA did enough checking to confirm it, knew the 14-16 classes in the WC are loaded, and said we HAVE to change coaches.

My guess is Jerrett won't be Miller's Kendall Williams, he's just much better at smoothing stuff like that over than howland was.

 

[Phrazbit]

I dont care if he did or didnt make a package deal. It was not like Cooper Jr was the Harpo Marx of tagalongs. The kid at one point was a premium recruit and had a strong connection to UofA already.

Jerrett saw the other guys in his own recruiting class, he saw the roster with Hill returning, the idea that he was lied to about playing time does not add up. He probably did not like the minutes he received but the kid was getting out performed.

If anything was the tipping point for his departure I'd think it would be the Gordon signing. An elite and probable "one and done" recruit coming in to play the same position. Now Jarrett was likely going to not receive consistent big minutes until his junior year. If he had chosen to transfer I wouldnt blame him at all. This happens frequently with the basketball powers, kids dont get the PT they want or see someone coming up behind them and they leave for a bigger role. But to go pro? Thats just stupid. He will be lucky to get drafted at all.

 

[Russ Smith]

I dont care if he did or didnt make a package deal. It was not like Cooper Jr was the Harpo Marx of tagalongs. The kid at one point was a premium recruit and had a strong connection to UofA already.

Jerrett saw the other guys in his own recruiting class, he saw the roster with Hill returning, the idea that he was lied to about playing time does not add up. He probably did not like the minutes he received but the kid was getting out performed.

If anything was the tipping point for his departure I'd think it would be the Gordon signing. An elite and probable "one and done" recruit coming in to play the same position. Now Jarrett was likely going to not receive consistent big minutes until his junior year. If he had chosen to transfer I wouldnt blame him at all. This happens frequently with the basketball powers, kids dont get the PT they want or see someone coming up behind them and they leave for a bigger role. But to go pro? Thats just stupid. He will be lucky to get drafted at all.

You need to read every interview Gordon or his dad has done in the last 18 months. He isn't coming to UA to play the same position Jerrett does. He wants to be a wing, he doesn't think he's a post, he thinks he's a 2/3, he and his dad have been saying it for 18 months. Jerrett thinks he's a stretch 4 and doesn't want to play 5.

The problem is when Gordon signed it meant Ashley now can't slide to the 3, where he wants to play. So ashley is competing with Jerrett again for minutes. And now Miller has enough depth he can convince Chol to redshirt, which means the guy who was supposed to be the backup 5, Chol, wouldn't be playing, and Jerrett would again be the backup 5, which he hates.

So yes Gordon committing started this problem, but it was more about what position Jerrett would get minutes at IMHO. One of the guys I talk to regularly on BRO is a workout guy and he worked out jerrett quite often in HS. He told me 2 things regularly, kid doesn't like Howland(nor does Cooper SR), and kid absolutely doesn't want to play the 5 and Arizona made it clear to him he wouldn't. He actually probably loved it when UA got Tarc because it meant they had a starting 5 and he assumed Chol would play the backup 5. Ashley was supposed to move to the 3 this year but taking Gordon changed that plan.

I agree he shouldn't have turned pro but transferring means sitting out a whole year and most kids simply don't have the patience to do that.

 

[AzStevenCal]

I think it's a bit questionable to hire a guy on the condition he brings a highly regarded player with him. That kind of package deal I frown on even though I know they all do it occasionally. I really have no issues when it involves two players, I see nothing underhanded in that kind of deal.

Steve

 

[Lefty]

Good article by Hansen.
http://azstarnet.com/sports/basketb...cle_f309d21b-b83c-58a8-a81d-56ee12c47cab.html

 

[Phrazbit]

Transferring and sitting out a year (or just riding out Gordon's likely brief AZ career and developing his talent and versatility in Tucson) would have been a much better option than going pro. If he thinks he isnt getting the playing time or the position play he wants then he is going to be in for a really rude awakening when the Idaho Stampede have him buried on their bench and logging the majority of his playing time in post positions (the D-League has about 900 wing players and 2 centers).

 

[Lefty]

Fran Fraschilla ‏@franfraschilla 33m

Favorite USA performance in @nikehoopsummit was Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. UA-bound forward has Chester, PA toughness and great nose for ball

 

[Russ Smith]

I think it's a bit questionable to hire a guy on the condition he brings a highly regarded player with him. That kind of package deal I frown on even though I know they all do it occasionally. I really have no issues when it involves two players, I see nothing underhanded in that kind of deal.

Steve

Of course it is, that's why I said I've changed my stance on package deals because they're so prevalent now that teams are doing even more. I don't at all deny UCLA hired McCray to get players, they knew Howland was dead in the water recruiting wise and needed a big class, it's one of the reasons I wanted Ben gone. Once it became obvious that 3 of their biggest targets in that class were guys McCray had in AAU I changed my stance on that to he was hired to get those kids.

The package deals with players were a slippery slope that led to the coaching stuff. the NCAA passed rules on the coaching stuff but they can't pass a rule on players.

I'm just saying does anybody actually believe it was a coincidence Cooper and Jerrett verballed on the same day and Jerrett turned pro the day after Cooper decommitted? that was a package deal, and in this case it worked for one year of Jerrett but now appears to have fallen apart on Miller.

 

[Russ Smith]

Fran Fraschilla ‏@franfraschilla 33m

Favorite USA performance in @nikehoopsummit was Rondae Hollis-Jefferson. UA-bound forward has Chester, PA toughness and great nose for ball

Really good defender from the last 2 games. He'll have to adjust to college but defensively and as a passer going to be really good. Ugly shot but goes in enough and he's very athletic.

My guess is he has at least one first team all conference year at UA.