Lawrence should be the target. That's a Queens kid. He should stay home and become a star in NY.
Yup. Would love this kid. He will have his pick of any school he wants though, basically. You know Lavin is putting the time and effort in. If he goes elsewhere, it won't be for a lack of recruiting effort.
Do you think the fact that Cuse will be in ACC in 2013 will have an adverse affect on their recruiting? I mean, the ACC kinda sucks outside of a few teams. I know they are on JL's list.
With the addition of Pitt and Cuse, the ACC will be considered the best B'Ball conference in the country. The BE will lose some of it's allure. That'll be a huge selling point for CUSE. Play the very best teams in the country, Duke, UNC, Pitt, etc...
I still don't think ACC will be the best conference. They'll still be heavy at the top with about 5 or 6 good teams instead of 3 or 4. Big east adding good programs in Temple and Memphis won't lose much. I still have my doubts whether Cuse has Boeheim at the helm me next few years as well which will be a big blow.
Further to your comments regarding Temple and Memphis being good programs--now that they will be in the Big East, their ability to recruit at a higher level has gone up (more national TV exposure and more conference opportunities to get an invite to the Big Dance) and that can only make them better than currently structured
Good points and well made. Temples is every bit the program as is Syracuse and what Frank Dumphrets has done there measures up well against Boeheim's 900 wins and various national championships. And Memphis as well is the match for Pitt, especially since Campari left and allowed John Pastorino to catapult Memphis to national prominence. There is no doubt that moving from the A10 and CUSA respectfully will not at all affect either teams chance to win ballgames - just any successful D league team would be able transition smoothly to the NBA and just as a good 10K claimer often jumps up to win a grade 1 race. Likely these teams will in fact improve as they begin to recruit at the same high level as does DePaul, Seton Hall, Providence and Saint John's under Betelguese, when blue chippers were the order of the day because of the natural exposures they got playing in the big dance in the worlds most famous arena in the greatest city in the world.
Too, the ACC isn't, as the kids say, all that the cat meows. Besides overrated DeWK, perennial choksters UNC, a Boeheimless Syracuse (my sources tell me he'll never coach a game in the ACC), Pitt (who knows how long Dixon stays), NC State, Maryland, Wake, Virginia, and Florida, what else do they have? A bunch of teams at the bottom of the conference who tend to lose more often than they win. Unlike the BE, where all the teams at the top tend to win more games than they lose - which is a huge difference not apparent to most casual fans. And anyway none of those teams can hold a candle to West Virginia, much less traditional basketball powerhouses like Central Florida, Boise State, and Navy. With a healthy Jim Calhoun safely at UConn for another 10 or 20 years and up and comers like the classy Mike Rice at Rutgers and Mick Cronin at UC the sky's the limit for the new conference.