(12-05-2021 05:25 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote:  

(12-04-2021 07:22 PM)holybovine Wrote:  

(12-04-2021 06:31 PM)Jerry Weaver Wrote:  

(12-03-2021 07:14 AM)emu79 Wrote:  

(12-03-2021 12:02 AM)holybovine Wrote:  I disagree a bit with your answer to #2. Difficult? Yes, absolutely. Impossible? No.

A guy like PJ Fleck could easily sell EMU to anyone. There aren’t many elite recruiters out there, but they exist.

Even rarer in my opinion are those coaches were are elite recruiters and elite player developers.

Cow and '79 your posts are indeed 100% correct! Cow, Fleck could have sold EMU, perhaps not as well as he did WMU, but he could have done better than we do now. '79, Jason Candle is the poster child for your post, he gets the best players consistently then does very little with them.

My point is this, does Rutgers, Kansas or Vandy EVER recruit in the top tier of their conferences? No, they do not. Secondly how many "hot" young coaches consider EMU, Rutgers, Kansas or Vandy? Not many as they choose to wait and climb less steep mountains elsewhere instead of risking their careers in Ypsilanti, Piscataway, Lawrence or Nashville. I note James Franklin as being the ONLY exception.

I'm not dissing Coach Creighton, he has plainly gotten better athletes to EMU. He now has the program in the "Northwestern" stage, the perennial doormat of the B1G was transformed by Gary Barnett into a true league competitor and more importantly stayed there. Once you "pop that bubble" of winning a league championship, then recruits take you seriously. To date, Rutgers, Kansas, Vandy and most importantly EMU have not done that.

Agreed Jerry. Creighton has done an excellent job of taking our program from the gutter to mediocrity. I think it will be up to the next coach to take us to the “next level”. Creighton’s ceiling is limited by a few factors, one of which is that he is very specific in the kinds of players he recruits. He doesn’t take calculated risks like McElwain (and others).

Valid point Cow. If Creighton were the MBB coach, I doubt Ray Lee or JT4 gets an EMU offer.