UCLA Basketball: Tony Parker for Next Great UCLA Big!
by DCBruins on Oct 1, 2011 5:33 AM PDT
Email
PrintToday is a big day for UCLA sports and I am not talking about football. Tony Parker takes his official visit to UCLA today. Tony Parker is:
With his combination of size and skill level, Parker is one of the elite big men in the 2012 class. He is a space eater in the post who can carve out position on the block. When watching him play you quickly see the skill he possesses;
UCLA has a good shot at Parker. Parker has said he would like to play with Kyle Anderson (who has been urging him to come on twitter) and more importantly, Parker as a student of the game knows that Howland and the UCLA factor will help him be the best basketball player he can be.
UCLA also has an inside advantage:
Parker has been tight-lipped about the recruiting process. He visited Ohio State a few weeks ago, and will go to UCLA this weekend. UCLA has some inside position because Parker's longtime AAU coach, Korey McCray, was recently hired as an assistant for the Bruins.
Of course, Parker is one of the hottest recruited players in the country. Why is Parker so desired, let's let his high school coach tell it when he described why Coach K and Duke are going all out for Parker:
"They think Tony can come to Duke and make something happen right away.. . ."They like his rebounding and that he can run the floor very well for his size," White said. "And they think he has a really nice shooting touch."
In addition to his individual ability he has led a three time state champion team:
Super 60 center Tony Parker finished with 21 points and 22 rebounds as Miller Grove won their third consecutive state championship on Friday night with a 67-59 decision over Rockdale County
UCLA class is already #2 recruiting class in the country. Parker would put the class a number one.
Some details of his UCLA recruitment in this interview.
Some highlights here.
I love the way he uses his right and left hands here, he really does have a nice touch close to the basket.
Come on Tony, follow recent big Josh Smith and others like Ryan Hollins and Kevin Love in coming to UCLA.
Go Bruins!
This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of BruinsNation's (BN) editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of BN's editors.
45 comments
|
0 recs |
Do you like this story?
Comments
I am confused about scholarships
I thought 12 was the limit. If Larry Drew is on scholarship we are @ 12, with only 2 for sure departures (JA and Zeek). Granted RN and Josh will probably leave after this year, but if neither does seems we are already over the limit.
by chirobruin on Oct 1, 2011 7:29 AM PDT via mobile reply actions
Scholarships are one-year offers.
In common practice once an athlete receives a scholarship they stay on scholarship until they graduate or transfer, but the NCAA structures them as lasting one academic year. If nothing else Howland could cut loose someone near the end of the bench to clear out a spot for an impact player. Bill Self has done it a few times in the last 4-5 years. I’m not saying Howland would or will, but it is possible.
Roses are red, violets are blue...f*** $C.
CT Put a Kid on Financial Aid
I don’t think UCLA would do it and it is distasteful but the reality is I am sure something would work out. Besides it is a happy problem to have too many good players coming back.
The count
13 is the official scholarship limit. The 2012-13 roster as it stands now:
Seniors:
De’end Parker
Larry Drew
Brendan Lane
Reeves Nelson
Anthony Stover
Juniors:
Travis Wear
David Wear
Tyler Lamb
Josh Smith
Sophomore:
Norman Powell
Freshmen:
Jordan Adams
Dominic Artis
Kyle Anderson
If Reeves and Josh go pro, that opens 2 spots. There are also rumors of Brendan Lane graduating early and Larry Drew paying his own way. Transfers are always a possibility. CBH seems to be recruiting like there will be at least two other spots, if not three. I know it’s super early, but I’m starting to get curious about the following recruiting class, because we will likely have 3 if not 4 or 5 scholarships for the class of 2013.
Come to Westwood Tony
Nothing like playing hoops at UCLA and getting out of the heat and humidity of the South!
Centered
Come on Tony, follow recent big Josh Smith and others like Ryan Hollins and Kevin Love in coming to UCLA.
In the past, hasn’t UCLA also had some other bigs who have done OK?
Both right
I picked those guys because of Howland. But Joe your point is very valid.
Why does everyone expect Reeves to leave?
He’s 6’8 and is way too small to play the PF in the NBA. And lord knows he doesn’t handle the ball well enough or shoot well enough and just simply isn’t a good enough athlete to play the SF. And on top of all that he wouldn’t be able guard either position. He will likely put his name in the draft and come back when scouts tell him he’s not athletic enough and needs to work on his ball handling and shooting so he can play the 3.
Here we go again
I remember all the naysayers who have whined over the years whenever we commented Holiday, KL or others were going to leave early. Nelson is gone after this season and most likely Smith too.
I think the Lee comparison would be the most telling
everyone saying he didn’t have the full skills to compete yet at the next level.
I think Pb’s point about what scouts will tell Reeves is valid; but I think the overriding point is that Reeves may ignore that advice to return – and, like Lee, find himself drafted lower than he hoped. With KL, you knew the scouts/GMs would tell him he was a lottery pick – anyone whining about people commenting on KL leaving early would be more downright foolish than people questioning a borderline NBA player like Reeves leaving early.
Yeah
Lee is a good example. However, I thought there was a somewhat of a little chance that he was going to come back by taking into the account the lockout situation and the fact that he had the opportuinity to emerge as one of the defensive superstars in the country this year. But even he left.
Nelson is gone. Folks should get ready for that now. It will be an absolute shocker if he comes comes (and I’d suggest folks to not hold their breath). There is a small chance Smith may come back for his junior season if he can be convinced that his stock (provided he gets in better shape heading into his junior year) is going to soar in a team that make make a Final-4 run. But again I wouldn’t get folks to get their hopes up.
This is somewhere Howland and his staff needs to improve. A big part of hoops these days is convincing kids to come back. Roy Williams is good at this. If Smith comes back UCLA could be one of the best teams next season if not the best. If Howland successfully re-recruits him by retaining him for another extra season, it would be a positive step.
It's silly to hope...but with the allure of a new pauley, a title contender, and all that talent
And the fact that, by all reports, Smith loves college and would be prone to staying if he is not yet a high lottery pick…I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch that his return could be the one big break we’ve all been waiting for and Howland deserves.
From what I read though, even if he leaves, Tony Parker could fill his role well enough (with the help of Stover, possibly a finally ready Lane, etc) for us still to be a title contender in 2012. That’s a reason Parker would be especially huge to get.
Agreed on all counts
But I am not going to get my hopes up re. Josh. Way too jaded at this point. :-)
Yeah, neither will I...Lee was really the straw that broke the back
The two big blows to me as a fan were LRMAM and Lee’s departures. Afflalo hurt like hell and possibly cost an NC, but we could’ve won an NC anyway, and his stock was probably not gonna rise much more. But if LRMAM came back I think we would’ve been a FF contender in ‘08 with his interior D and the entire Dragobrick era would’ve been avoided. And if Lee was coming back we’d be top 5 this coming year without a doubt. That’s two title-contending seasons lost to the second freakin round.
I still expect a good season this year, but there are many doubts that Lee’s presence would’ve solved dag nabbit.
It is strange but
Lee may be easier to replace than Honeycutt. I like Lee much more, but I think Powell is going to be good and Lamb already is a good defender. But we do not have a likely 3 right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a big Lee fan and not as big a Honeycutt fan but we have replacements for Lee and not for Honeycutt.
totally agree
Honeycutt’s talent was unique and harder to replace. Malcolm’s intensity on d and an improved jump shot can be taught.
by freesia39 on Oct 2, 2011 12:04 AM PDT via iPhone app up reply actions
I keep hoping KL will stay one more year
Is it time for me to give up on that yet?
greg in denver, U.C.L.A. guy for life - BruinsNation.com
I agree with you passionbucket
So that would leave 2 or 3 available….can we offer as many as we want and figure it out later. Still confused. This guy sounds great though.
by chirobruin on Oct 1, 2011 10:13 AM PDT via mobile reply actions
I am all exited about our basketball future
Even though we are still in the football season, I am already in the mood for basketball. Looks like we will have a good 2012 team full of freshmen and sophs, but we need some seniors to stabilize the team. Hopefully the Wear brothers will stay.
CBH giving the Pauley tour?
although a year away and a compromise factoring in tradition and cost, it has to help recruiting to have the Pauley upgrade underway.
Hoping for Parker to become a Bruin, but
I do not support the practice, which has become all too common, of hiring an AAU coach and SURPRISE, his best players end up with him. It’s a bit underhanded, though it is apparently legal. Coach would never have gone for that in his day.
Sorry guys, but that’s just the way I feel.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
So what would you have him do?
We’ve been saying for at least a year now that much of our recruiting malaise has been due to deadweight assistants who are now no longer with the program. CBH makes a move to directly deal with this deficiency and SURPRISE, we have people here who will still find anything to complain about.
BN is not a platform for propagating your fearmongering and innuendo. This all feels like an attempt to paint McCray with the dirty AAU brush in broad strokes so you don’t have to come up with something to substantiate your concern trolling. Show me what specifically you have a problem with here, and why McCray himself is a bad assistant instead of engaging in a whisper campaign with the AAU boogeyman. If you can’t do that, then kindly STFU.
BlueWave might as well say that he does not support the practice of modern college ball
How exactly do you think great recruiters recruit these days? They recruit by establishing relationships, so it follows that you hire the recruiters who are good at that.
It seems to me that our recruiting problems started when Keating and Daniels left....
What coaching experience at the Div level does McCray have to warrant being hired by what is historically one of the best programs in the nation? SJC is right that McCray is an excellent trainer, but Tydides, you need to take the Bruin Blue blinders off if you don’t think CBH hired him for his AAU recruiting connections. As I said, Coach, who I consider to be one of my life mentors, would never have approved of this practice.
I’ve been a Bruin probably longer than you’ve been alive and a loyal member of this board since 2008 and I deeply resent the tone of your response. I write my opinion and I get blasted and told to STFU. That is uncalled for. If we can’t civilly discuss the program that we love, then we have a real problem. You are one of our Managers and you are better than that.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
Tydides pushed back hard against you
Because you suggested we have done something improper by bringing in McCray. That is an absurd notion and we will push back hard against anyone making that suggestion. No NCAA violation has been committed. Howland has done everything by the books wrt to his hire of McCray. So to suggest this is not good or that there is event a hint of impropriety is deeply offensive and frankly kind of reckless. So yes the pushback was more than warranted and I don’t care how long you have been on BN.
I have my reservations about UCLA hoops but this is not one of them because no NCAA violations has been committed by Howland. He has done everything by the books. So don’t concern troll on this issue as it being something inappropriate again. Thanks.
Question: If $C hired an AAU coach....
and suddenly some highly rated former players on his team ended up in cardinal and gold, I guarantee we’d all be criticizing it, and rightly so. Why the double standard? The fact is, we as Bruins, are the trustees of what Coach Wooden established and we need to maintain his high standards and discuss the matter if we feel something at least appears bad. No, hiring an AAU coach and then having his players come to UCLA is not an NCAA violation, but it is a symptom of what is wrong with college athletics. It appears to people who hate us to be improper. That’s all I’m saying.
Tydides response was rude and way over the top. The other people who responded disagreed in a civil tone. I can respect that. It’s a shame our managers (Yes, plural) can’t seem to do the same thing.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
You are making too much of this
Parker is not coming (if he does) because we hired McCray. That is ridiculous and insulting to Parker. Now McCray may have helped open the door to Parker but that is very different. Also, McCray is not going to be fired if we don’t get Parker.
The west is down for high school players. McCray job in part seems to be to open the east to UCLA. He has done that so far and Anderson who did not play for him is an example of that.
Now if this was like what Larry Brown did many years ago at Kansas when he hired Danny Manny’s Dad as an assistant coach I would agree with you. But it is not.
It could be that
I am making too much of this. I’m just concerned how it looks when we hire an AAU coach with no Div 1 experience to help recruit and some of his players show up here.
It looks like I’ve hijacked this thread and that is not what I intended. I just wanted to state something that has bothered me since McCray’s hiring. You guys could very well be right and there is nothing wrong here. I want to believe that too.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
of course!
but that was something that was obvious, while the Derozan/Miller fiasco was just “controversial”. No one got punished for it but it’s clear it was underhanded.
You can't guarantee a hypothetical
Your original post was over the top, inflammatory, and baseless, and it deserved an over the top response, and if you don’t like that and you continue to assert your baseless opinions without any factual backup, then don’t bother asking for civility, cause i’ll ban your ass so fast you won’t know what hit you.
I think you're missing the point.
I don’t have any evidence of any wrong doing and I am not trying to assert that. I’m only saying that this is a question of perception. It looks, especially to those who hate us, like there could have been a quid pro quo.
Look, McCray seems like he could help our program. I hope so. I’m just concerned about how it looks.
If you want to ban me for simply expressing an opinion contrary to yours, then roll the dice and go ahead.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
And that's called being a concern troll
You and I both know that you’re being disingenuous and trying to frame this as you being attacked for your opinion when I made it perfectly clear that you are being attacked for not backing it up. You dismiss it here as if that isn’t important, but unfortunately for you when you level baseless accusations here on BN, especially ones to the detriment of the program, you damn well better have some evidence. You don’t get to lob bombs over the wall and then cover your ass with “it’s just an opinion”.
So guess what, you’re the one who missed the point, and I suspect deliberately so, because you realized about three replies back that you don’t have a leg to stand on, and the only way to further this pathetic charade is to misdirect attention to how you were treated (which I make absolutely no apologies for, especially given the lies you just tried to pull).
I’ve got more than enough justification to ban you just on concern trolling, and adding in the fact that you’re now lying to save face rather than manning up and admitting you messed up isn’t helping your cause.
So you have three choices: You can reply with evidence or justification for your opinion that McCray isn’t someone we want around the program, you can man up and admit you messed up here, or you can try to weasel your way out of this again like you just did and get smacked by the banhammer. I guess there’s a hidden fourth choice of just disappearing from this thread, which actually seems like the best option for you at this point.
AAU or not
Just about any assistant coach will have some relationship with high school basketball players. Most are coming from coaching backgrounds and have been recruiting already. McCray has, from what I understand, some significant training experience, working with the likes of Dwight Howard and John Wall outside of AAU. I think it’s difficult to say whether or not the McCray hire was for the players and it’s a bonus that he’s a good coach. It seems the opposite from what I’ve heard-he’s a good coach, and his players are a bonus.
Point taken..
McCray’s training skills are not in dispute. Wall and Howard wouldn’t go to him if he wasn’t any good. But I think I still think this is a valid question: Given his lack of Div 1 coaching experience, would a program like ours have hired him without his player connections?
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
An alternate question
to be answered in March: was hiring him an improvement over hypothetically retaining Scott Duncan?
Another thought about AAU coaches – this from a fishwrap article when McCray was hired:
Howland noted that former Bruins assistant Ernie Zeigler, now head coach at Central Michigan, was once an Amateur Athletic Union coach. Howland said he would have no reservations about hiring a club coach “if the person has a background in college basketball and is qualified.”
Roses are red, violets are blue...f*** $C.
The key issue is,
would an AAU coach be qualified to be an assistant at a major program? I guess that’s up to the coach hiring the guy. Nothing illegal, but it would appear like something was wrong when the guy’s players get scholies.
I’ll give you an example of how another coach handled a similar situation. A guy I know is a HS coach in the Midwest. He had applied to work with a mid-major program, but the head coach said, “We can’t hire you because we are trying to recruit two players from your high school.” It would not have been illegal if they hired him, but it would have looked bad. Of course, if you’re Calipari, you don’t care, but this coach did. Coach Wooden would have cared too.
I may work with the Waves, but I'm still a Bruin!
(Formerly "HoozierDaddy")
Is McCray's job because of Adams and Parker?
I don’t think so. Also Adams is the lowest ranked of our recruits and Parker (If we get him) may be number three behind Anderson and hopefully Shabazz.
I would be with you if McCray was hired to bring a player. It is obvious he was not. He was hired in part to help recruit. As the other UCLA assistant said (paraphrasing) Ben Howland can Coach. Matthews knew his job was to help recruit. Howland can’t be in Las Vegas, Virginia, New Jersey, and Georgia all the time. But he can send an assistant.
As far as Wooden. His assistant at the time worked hard to get KAJ. Wooden came to seal the deal. KAJ would not have come to UCLA without that prep work. So it is wrong to criticize CBH like this.
Comments For This Post Are Closed
Secondary Sidebar
User Tools
Related FanPosts on Bruins Nation
Related FanShots on Bruins Nation
FanPosts
Community blog posts and discussion.
