“@franfraschilla: Hearing that Tom Abatemarco may be on Coach Lav's short list. Would be great there. Can recruit ANYWHERE. HS/AAU guys love him. He works!”
Rethinking the recruiting assistant thing. This past recruiting season has certainly demonstrated the value of a TWO man dedicated recruiting team out in the field. Could be Lav's DOES think he needs a proven experienced Senior recruiter out there with coach Chiles. After all, this past year was certainly an annomoly - the head coach able to act as a FULL time lead recruiter. That's not going to be the case going forward. With Steve back on the bench and at practice full-time, he may feel he needs someone else out their in the field leading the full-court press on recruits, while he re-assumes his normal head coaching duties, and returns to his normalrecruiting role as "the closer".
In which case, a guy like Abatemarco, with his recent western US recruiting success, makes perfect sense.
Just speculating, of cours.
No.
We need X and O guy. End of story IMO.
Unless Steve thinks new Full-Time New Yorker Keady is Xs and Os enuf.
Do you?
I don't and that's not a knock on Keady but the game isn't what it was when he coached. Keady is a helluva extra asset we have. There are limitations on what he can and cannot do as he's not a coach on staff.
I'll say this - I agree with Moose that we need more of an X's and Os or player development coach, but if you look at the names that have been floating around.. most of them have some recruiting experience/expertise. Besides the ac with the Pacers.
So CR may be correct in that Lavin either a) wants a 3rd person on the recruiting trails with him and Tony, or b) would like to hand most of the recruiting off to Tony and a new assistant and spend more time at base camp.
Let's not forget Dunlap really didn't do much recruiting at all. I think it was mentioned he was out watching players a few times with Tony locally, but besides that he didn't really hit the road. So I wouldn't be surprised (based just on the names out there) if the new assistant had recruiting as part of his responsibilities.
He still may be an x's and o's guy... but he might be asked to help out on the recruiting front as well. Most assistants are. Dunlap was somewhat of an exception.