A D1 College Roster

[collegewatcher]

Re: A D1 College Roster

I am sort of sorry someone brought up Nate Funk. Probably my fault for bringing up Creighton. I should have gone with Illinois State!

Anyway, vantage, you are mistaken about Funk. First, he signed with Creighton during the Fall of 2001 during the early signing period. Second, Creighton is going to their 7th NCAA tourney in the past 9 years, so I guess it is hard to say they "weren't real succesful" at that time, although 2001 was one of the years they did not make it.

[juice]

Re: A D1 College Roster

It is much easier for the women to field a competitive DI team than it is for the men, because their are a lot of DI level women's players around this area. The high school girls basketball is as good around this area as anywhere in the country. The good high school girls teams from this area can compete with the best girls teams in the country. I'm afraid I can't say the same about the boys basketball in the area. There is obviously some very good players around here, but just not as many as there are for the girls. I'm sure this isn't news to you guys, but I hadn't seen the point made in this particular thread so I thought I would throw it out there.

[1bunnies]

Re: A D1 College Roster

Will Williams be able to take his game to another level as a sophomore?

Definately.....I know him well

I can hardly wait to watch Kai play again next season. Middle of October is Midnight Madness. Hope you folks had a safe trip home. It was great to see you again.

[SUPERBUNNY]

Re: A D1 College Roster

If we want a good and stable roster, I think we need to be more thorough in recruiting. We seem to be worried about athletic ability and no more. Are we concerned beyond making certain that they qualify beyond NCAA regs?  I believe SDSU has had a mission statement that should not have changed with the transition to D1. I dont know the statement verbatim, but I beleive it relates to making certain that athletes are both students and athletes and they leave SDSU with a pleasant experience.

I think too attempting to find athletic ability, we end up with whats out there and then two or three years later, we ring our hands and wonder why individuals have left or why they are not happy. I dont run this board nor do I run the Men' bb program. I have my opinion and I think we need to recruit people who have academic goals besides athletic goals. Once they get here we need to provide them every means to met both set of goals. The individuals that make up the roster should feel good about their experience at SDSU. If they don't then some one on campus needs to find out why.

Also look at the women's program, again maybe the D2 championship set us up for good recruiting, but I dont think there is  anyone on that staff that has not paid attention to whom they are pursuing as a prospect and whether they are going to behappy at SDSU. The over GPA  for the Women's BB program speaks for its self in term of well being within the roster.

Haldersham,

I have to disagree with what you had to say in that post on a couple of levels.

1. Athletic ability has to be a huge part of what we are recruiting. Unitl we get ourselves established in the Mid-Con and at the D-1 level as a solid program, the blue chip prospects aren't going to line up for us. We have to look for players that have athletic ability and be able to mold them into solid players. We are having success with that but are asking freshman and sophomores to be the team leaders when they haven't fully developed. It's a risky proposition but that is life as a transition team. Some work out, some don't! Eventually, we will be able to have semiors and juniors as our main guns and then the new players will play in spurts to give them a rest which will give them valuable experience. That's how established players do it but we aren't there.

2. The transition for men's basketball is much more difficult than for the women's team. There is a much larger talent gap to fill in the men's game than the women's. Now before everyone gets bent out of shape, let me explain that. When you look at the size, speed, and strength of a top men's program, the gap is huge because of the physical ability of the players. Nagy says that in interviews. The difference in talent isn't as large in the women's game. The best teams in womens D-1 ball are a little bigger, a little faster, a little stronger overall, but a good team can still play with them. AJ deserves a lot of credit for this.

OTHER FACTORS IN MY MIND

3. Scheduling has been much tougher for the men as well. The main reason is because the mens teams generally draw much bigger crowds at home and therefore pay better gaurantees for teams that will travel (i.e., SDSU). The women have been able to get some bigger name schools into Frost Arena because it is economically feasible.

4. More coaching staff would help, but the focus has indeed been placed on scholarships ahead of staff and facilities. That is the right thing to do.

The bottom line is that there is more than a tiny spot of light at the end of the tunnel. Here are my reasons for looking to the future positively!

1. Mid-Con in 2007! Something for current players to look forward to and something that is a selling tool on the recruiting trail. Plus, a decent schedule.

2. NCAA Tournament eligible in two years! We have a chance to dance!!!

3. All of our current players will have a year of experience. That is what we lack. We have a number of very good players now but we need more balance. Kai is a stud and has huge potential for the future! Cadwell obviously can play, we've all seen it, but he can't do it alone. Callahan is going to be a great point gaurd.

4. Ben and Mo will provide experience, knowledge of Nagy's system, depth, and leadership.

5. New recruits will continue to improve our depth.

6. Nagy is going to be a better coach for having to go through the turmoil.

7. The fans will come back when we start winning more games and the games are on better nights of the week. Also, the WNIT will breath life into all of the programs at SDSU, although I would guess the men's team is tired of hearing about them.

Some of us here are optimists and some of us aren't. It's that way in everything and we are all entitled to our opinions. We just have to make sure that we aren't saying things that are harmful to the students. The moderators do a nice job of watching that.

The transition process is brutal, but there is a bright light on the horizon and I believe we are going to get there in a hurry.

This is probably my $.10 worth, sorry about the length!

SUPERBUNNY

[1bunnies]

Re: A D1 College Roster

I wholeheartedly agree with you Superbunny. We all just need to be a little patient. The future does look bright.

[Haldersham]

Re: A D1 College Roster

Superbunny


I am not so much impatient as I am concerned about the image of SDSU in the long run. If we have to take short cuts and compromise on academic standards in order to get one year of playing out a gifted athlete with academic defiencies, then we can expect a lot of things to go wrong. What has happened in the past threes years will be nothing when we start having staff write term papers etc just to keep a gifted athlete on campus. We kind of forget what has happened in the last ten years at the U of Minnesota. They got the gifted athletes and they got to the big dance, but yet did so many worng things and they apparently could not give a rip about the athletes who occassionally were students.
A very good coach CLem Haskins ruined his career in the process. This is what I dont want to see happen at SDSU.

I am not a advocate of going back to D2, but I believe we had our standards and maintained them. We still need to hold true to those standards no matter how steep the hill is in D1 Men's bb.

I want our athletes to leave campus with a good feeling about SDSU. From what I can tell we seem to be moving in the right direction with most of the young players you mentioned who are carrying a heavy load on the basketball court. Those that are Freshman and Soph'. As best I can tell most of them do have academic goals and they are making progress in that direction as well. In that sense I am happy with the progress. Winning is secondary in my mind, as these young folk have a long way to go in life after they leave this campus. The cheers, the slaps on the back and the high fives become fewer and fewer as the years since leaving campus fill in their personal lives. At this point the only thing that  can carry them are their academic creditials. The creditials need to be genuine and applicable to the work market.

Michael Loney may be on the average side as an athlete, but he can write a detailed paper on shooting frees throws and applying his undertanding of mathematics that he has learned at SDSU which was linked some time back on this message board. I would rather have 20 Michael's than say  one gifted athlete who cared only about getting on the basketball court and nothing else and had no academic goals, and no thoughts about life after basketball. You know, the ones  who would need help with a term paper and tell you:"Write the paper for me, I dont have time to do that book stuff."

My guess is Michael Loney will leave SDSU with a good feeling about the institution. Too me, that is very important and no athletic scholarship should be offered without having some academic considerations I guess what I am arguing for is balanced student athletes in men's BB as we have in all the other 20 sports offered. You dont need to rehash all the obtacles of making progress at the D1 level, I have not been under a rock for the past three years, but  there are times I wish I had been under a rock. The future and what our student athletes have accompolished in the classroom and on the court does matter more so than a coaches win loss record or whether the trophy room is free of dust and full of hardware.

[tattoo]

Re: A D1 College Roster

It is much easier for the women to field a competitive DI team than it is for the men, because their are a lot of DI level women's players around this area.  The high school girls basketball is as good around this area as anywhere in the country.  The good high school girls teams from this area can compete with the best girls teams in the country.  I'm afraid I can't say the same about the boys basketball in the area.  There is obviously some very good players around here, but just not as many as there are for the girls.  I'm sure this isn't news to you guys, but I hadn't seen the point made in this particular thread so I thought I would throw it out there.

Juice, you are a genius! I bet you thought long and hard about this statement.

Great Job! ROFLMAO

[bballfan54]

Re: A D1 College Roster

[quote author=bballfan54 link=1173158115/0#9 date=1173187097]Will Williams be able to take his game to another level as a sophomore?

Definately.....I know him well

I can hardly wait to watch Kai play again next season. Middle of October is Midnight Madness. Hope you folks had a safe trip home. It was great to see you again.[/quote]


Kai was telling me there is a schedule out for next year do you know where I can find that yet ???
I would like to be able to plan to get to ALL home games next year......

[filbert]

Re: A D1 College Roster

The conference portion of the schedule is set and public.

http://www.mid-con.com/future/07-08_men_basketball.pdf

You'll have to talk to Coach Nagy about the non-conference schedule

[bballfan54]

Re: A D1 College Roster

Ok thanks I will

[JACKGUYII]

Re: A D1 College Roster

It seems an old friend has returned to the board with a different moniker, but with the same tired, BS rhetoric. I think many of us can see right through what you are trying to articulate.

[Jacks#1Fan]

Re: A D1 College Roster

Stats concerning the basketball team GPA through the fall of 2005 do not really tell us anything.

There has been a heck of a lot of movement on the roster since then, including Bilitz flunking out and Cordova failing to qualify.

I saw this post earlier but was out of town. Have been trying to find it since. Just to set the record straight, Cordova did not "fail to qualify." He was a Prop 46 (?) athlete, which means we could recruit him and bring him to SDSU but he had to sit out a year and could not practice with the team or play and had to maintain a certain grade level.. That all happened because he had poor grades his first two years in high school, before he got into basketball. He had no problem getting good grades the last two, when he understood he had to do that, and he is having no problems this year in college and will be fully eligible as a freshman (call him a redshirt freshman if you wish) next fall. So don't fault him.

And finally, he was a year younger than his classmates, and Coach Nagy once said that if he had been in high school one more year with classmates his same age, we probably never would have been able to recruit him to SDSU. All of which says, I believe, that the year of sitting out will provide him with more maturity next year and the year of concentrating on studies as well, didn't hurt him. I look for him to do very well next year.

[JACKGUYII]

Re: A D1 College Roster

I noticed many of the Jacks Men's team at the game on Saturday cheering on the women. You have to think some of this euphoria and positivity will rub off on the men's team! I hope it will challenge them to continue to work hard and as we add a few players make a similiar run.

[filbert]

Re: A D1 College Roster

I noticed many of the Jacks Men's team at the game on Saturday cheering on the women. You have to think some of this euphoria and positivity will rub off on the men's team! I hope it will challenge them to continue to work hard and as we add a few players make a similiar run.

There is such a strong positive vibe around SDSU (Gateway membership, WNIT run, etc.) now that you can't help but think it will rub off to some extent on the men's team. For one thing, they now have seen with their own eyes what a rabid basketball school SDSU is. Give the Jackrabbit Nation a reason to cheer, and we'll sell out Frost for you.

In two years, it could very well be the men's team playing in front of a sellout Frost Arena crowd for the Mid-Con regular-season championship. It'll take hard off-season work from the players we have, and adding a couple of missing pieces, but it's all there waiting for the guys to take the opportunity they have, and run with it.

[JackrabbitGuy]

Re: A D1 College Roster

That's exactly what I was thinking while sitting in Frost Arena Saturday night watching the women play.  I hope the men are taking notice and at the very least Williams, Callahan and the other freshmen/sophs from this year are not depressed and thinking about transfering.  The first thing they need is for this group to stay together and with a couple of added players, this team could be pretty good by the time they are Juniors/Seniors.