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Kamdy, I respect the hell out of you and believe you have a better overall understanding of both the game of basketball and basketball recruiting than I do. However, this is about more than just relationship building over time. What about the transfer market, and especially the grad transfer market? That has absolutely nothing to do with long-term relationship building. It's about convincing guys, some of whom have only one year of on-court eligibility left, that Nebraska is a place where they can take their talents, experience success and play in the tournament. That really has very little to do with the type of long-term relationship building with high school players that you're talking about. This year, we were simply unable to parlay our momentum into real success in the transfer market. Now, I know we're a Johnny-come-lately type of program right now without an established history of success, but when I look at the type of transfer Creighton is bringing in, for example, relative to what we're doing, it's really disheartening to me. I was personally hoping to see a greater degree of success in courting transfers in the 2014 late period, and especially grad transfers. I felt that some talented transfers would see what we're building, the conference we play in, the success we had last year and the type of team we have coming back, and want to be a part of it. I was wrong. Transfers, especially one year guys, want to play and play now. Tell me what guy, from the outside, sees themselves playing over Walt, Terran, or Shavon. All thats left is the center and point guard position. The centers that we heard NU in on went to bigger and more prosperous schools. Point guard there really doesnt seem to be a huge need there but also not a big market of them out there. One thing to also remember, just because BR and RW report things, it doesnt mean Miles and staff werent on top of other guys but they simply had no interest. NU is still a new commodity on the circuit and doesnt hold the same weight. I'd assume Walt wouldnt be at Nebraska if he played more and better as a freshman. If Miles didnt have the relationship with terran I doubt we get him. The relationships will be built, the connections will grow, and as they continue to build a winning tradition you will start to see more activity with transfers and recruits respectively.

I think u can fully support Miles, but still be worried bout recruiting, esp HS recruiting, so far.

I'll see what I can do.

This from the paper version of the Lincoln paper, so no link, sorry. She's now been named women's softball coach of the year in the Big Ten conference. Coincidentally, in her 3rd season coaching in the Big 8, she was named CoTY in that league; in her third year in the Big 12, she was named CoTY in that league; and now in our 3rd year in the B1G, she's been named CoTY in this league. All at the same school. Conference Coach of the Year in three different conferences all while coaching at Nebraska. How cool is that?

For some reason I'm the exact opposite from Cookie--this thread and discussion are incredibly frustrating and disappointing: it's like listening to a guy who just won a multi-million $ lottery complain about finances. For Pete's sake, whatever happened to "long, lean and under-rated"? By definition, Tim Miles' recruits will apparently be a disappointment to most. Heck, look at what Tim Miles did at Colorado State with few-to-none stars behind his recruit's names.And for the record, NU is not a tough place to recruit--just ask Tim Miles and, as he says, Connie Yori, John Cook, etc. And for the further record, the world of college basketball is filled with highly-rated recruits whose college performance falls somewhere between "disappointing" and "crashed and burned." Just look at the list of multi-star transfers this year and every other recent year. And then compare them with the over-achieving-from-expectations performance of most players on Tim Miles teams, such as the likes of Benny Parker, Shavon Shields, Walter Pitchford, Terran Petteway, Leslee Smith, and all the scholarship seniors on the prior year's team.

Honestly, I see both sides of this argument. On the one hand, Miles has done an incredible job of building this program in the two years he’s been here and has accelerated the rebuilding process to an extent that I don’t believe many with realistic expectations expected. However, the OP raises a valid concern. We’re where we are right now, aside from all of the outstanding culture building and player development this staff has overseen during their tenure, primarily because of two key players. The first is Shavon Shields, who was a legacy and a Sadler recruit. Of course, Miles would have gotten him too if he had been the coach when Shavon was being recruited, but we were very fortunate to land Shavon. He’s turned out to be better than anyone imagined. And, of course, then there’s Mr. Petteway. This was like a gift from the heavens that no one saw coming. I might add that the guy who recruited Terran (and Tarin Smith and Jacob Hammond too) is now in South Dakota running his own program. I feel we lost our best recruiter when Smith walked out the door. I believe we got very lucky with Petteway. If he had averaged 10 PPG at Tech instead of 1.9 as a freshman, would we have gotten him? Maybe we still would have, but I’m skeptical knowing what his other options would have looked like. I know he loved Smith and Miles, but no one knew how good this guy was going to be, and the competition for his services wasn’t that strong. When Terran transferred here, he wasn’t the guy we know now. He was a guy whose freshman season highlight wasn’t even a basketball play, but rather a hard elbow to the jaw of an opposing player. Now, every team needs a bit of luck, no matter how good, but it’s not every year that you get a legacy recruit like Shields and strike gold with a transfer like Petteway. The Petteway situation was almost like those stories you hear about the woman who goes to a garage sale and buys an ugly painting for $5 because she likes the frame, only to find a priceless Monet hidden behind it when she gets home. We will not continue to be that lucky. Sooner or later we’re going to have to rely on skill to recruit a higher caliber of player. Here’s the bottom line: if we want to compete with the top teams in the B1G, we have to be able to recruit well enough to match up with their personnel. That doesn’t mean our 13 need to be as good as their 13, because that’s never going to happen when you compare our roster to the likes of Michigan, MSU, OSU, etc. What we need, however, is to be able to have a core group of guys who can go out there and legitimately compete against what those teams will put on the court. Though we were a bit short on personnel last season, we had enough talent to compete at the highest level and challenge any team in the country when we were at our best, especially at home. Will that continue in the years to come? Tarin Smith and Jacob Hammond appear to be nice players. Ayegba is a one-year space filler who shouldn’t be counted on for anything more illustrious than basic competence. We’ll see who else joins this class, but signing only one player in the early period was a disappointment. Failing to fill the classes over the past two years was another disappointment that hurt us, and we may come up short once again for the third year in a row. Kenya Hunter, to me, has been a disappointment on the recruiting trail thus far. Moses Ayegba will help us, but even that was a special situation. Has Hunter distinguished himself as a quality recruiter thus far? Have his connections gotten us in the door with players who didn’t go to Georgetown or whose AAU coaches weren’t close personal friends? Hell, he couldn’t even get us a visit from Greg Whittington, regardless of what subsequently happened with his academic status. No matter how much we love coach Miles -- and I count myself among his most passionate supporters – we have to be honest with ourselves and not allow our affection and admiration for him to prevent us from engaging in a sincere critical analysis of his recruiting performance. Eventually, the guy has got to start recruiting at a higher level, and he’s got to start filling the scholarship numbers. If he doesn’t, this thing is eventually going to run out of steam and we’re going to start losing ground, not only to the Wisconsins and Ohio States of the world, but also to the second-tier programs in the Conference. I’ve posted before that I’m a bit disappointed that the recent elevation of the Nebrasketball brand hasn’t given our recruiting a major boost thus far. Sure, it helped us land Tarin Smith, but look at the competition there. The St. Joe’s offer was decent, but after that you’re talking about a guy whose best offers were from teams like Delaware, Buffalo, Bucknell, Detroit and Ole Miss. Despite all of the publicity, great press and on-court achievement over the past few months, the impact on late-period recruiting for 2014 has been muted at best. Its impact on the transfer market has been especially disappointing. Now, I know many of you are preaching about how basketball recruiting is 2-3 years out and that 2015 is the defining class, but if we come up short again, the excuses will start to look very hollow. Ed Morrow is a must get. If we strike out there, it will be a very bad general indicator of the strength of our recruiting. It’s time for this staff to take care of business in recruiting the way they’ve taken care of business on the court. I hope people understand that I’m not trying to be negative or highly critical of the staff. Like Central said, I believe it’s possible to both love and appreciate coach Miles and what he’s done, but also be concerned about the way we’ve recruited during his time in Lincoln. I don’t care how good a coach you are. If you don’t have the players, you won’t win in this league.

Still amazes me how many people do not understand recruiting in basketball.

After the original blog? http://huskerhoops.blogspot.com/

Thanks for stepping in....Welcome with your first post! In a few years, I believe we will all marvel at what TM has done...with the substantial help of TO and many others that laid the groundwork.. This thing called Nebrasketball just evolves and advances! Getting' on the cart before it is traveling to fast...priceless! Welcome aboard!... As for "To me, we have a long ways to go with talent and recruiting. Miles has done wonders with what we have. But there is something missing. Something just ain't right."... You are not watching the CONSTANT up-grade in talent that continues whether you recognize it or not...In 2 years, we went from 200 to 50...and we are only getting better...what do you want/expect? Next year...6 seed or better!...Don't pinch me!

Something that may be a factor is Keanu turns 19 in a couple weeks. Maybe he didn't want to be finishing prep school at 20 and still have 4 years of college. I would be willing to bet he would want to get his clock going with his age and at the very least could go home and play professionally.

Okay now I know I'm not the biggest guy on this board.

Im sure this has been talked about with the Huskers staff and probably why we have seen a lot of internet in SF's and PF's.

That makes 3 Husker coaches named B1G coach of the year I think. Miles, Yori, and now Revelle. Pretty good showing out of Lincoln if you ask me.

I agree. Nebraska's on court success this season happened too late to really have a serious impact on the 2014 class, because many recruits were already signed or already had their lists narrowed down. I believe Nebraska will see the benefits in the 2015 recruiting class.

In between the possible signing of Petteway and Petteway actually signing, someone posted a semi-random youtube video meant to convey a thought. There was a 11 post reply about whether or not people post too many random music youtube videos. OK, gotcha. I guess I didn't observe that and my semi-sarcastic response was actually apropos totally by accident. Now that we have that out of the way can we get you on the record for Do we want Pinder? Yes[ ] No [ ] Other [ ] Do we post too many random youtube videos? Yes[ ] No [ ] Other [ ] YES..always want athletic fowards Other..im MEH about it, dosnt bother me either way https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1dnqKGuezo

there will NEVER be too many random youtubes!

Also, as somebody pointed out about the transfers...so many transfers end up going to a place they were PREVIOUSLY recruited. Just like Petteway did with NU. Miles had recruited him to CSU...he went to Texas Tech, didn't like it if memory serves me, it was Terran's parents that actually reached out to Miles. They had liked the relationship they had before from when he recruited them to CSU. So the more Miles gets in on guys now, the better off it could eventually end up. Maybe Deng Deng doesn't end up liking Baylor after next year...maybe he reaches back out to Miles to come to NU? You just never know how this all pans out. The more guys this staff gets in relationships with, the better. Then having a guy from Tarin Smith for example playing under a legendary coach may help us on down the road get more guys from that school.

Say a top 50 guy has 35 offers and only 1 team gets him. Are the other 34 considered losers in that recruiting battle?

Is this the plot for Anchorman 2? (feel free to apply your own pop culture reference) Doc = Ron Burgandy Cox = Champ Kind Croft = Brian Fantana Anwar = Brick Tamland

I don't understand how that could possibly be a recruiting tool. Don't these recruits know? That viney stuff grows so fast, if you stopped your car in a city park for some late night Standhardinger, by the time you finished you'd need the cops to show up just to cut you free.

They loved him ever since he was a high school player and they saw him playing AAU ball in Galveston. Yes, that's absolutely true. That's why they welcomed him as a transfer without even a second thought. Does that mean, when he signed his scholarship papers, that they envisioned him leading the B1G in scoring in his first season or being as incredibly dominant as he's been? I would say no way in hell.

Kamdy, I respect the hell out of you and believe you have a better overall understanding of both the game of basketball and basketball recruiting than I do. However, this is about more than just relationship building over time. What about the transfer market, and especially the grad transfer market? That has absolutely nothing to do with long-term relationship building. It's about convincing guys, some of whom have only one year of on-court eligibility left, that Nebraska is a place where they can take their talents, experience success and play in the tournament. That really has very little to do with the type of long-term relationship building with high school players that you're talking about. This year, we were simply unable to parlay our momentum into real success in the transfer market. Now, I know we're a Johnny-come-lately type of program right now without an established history of success, but when I look at the type of transfer Creighton is bringing in, for example, relative to what we're doing, it's really disheartening to me. I was personally hoping to see a greater degree of success in courting transfers in the 2014 late period, and especially grad transfers. I felt that some talented transfers would see what we're building, the conference we play in, the success we had last year and the type of team we have coming back, and want to be a part of it. I was wrong.

I will be the first to admit I don't know anything about recruiting. Will you teach me? I have said that I expected to be better off recruiting by now and have had people tell me I just don't get it. I am extremely pleased with Miles but I thought after the initial recruiting hype that we would start to hear some more and bigger "booms!" ill attempt to, it takes multiple years to get in on basketball recruits, and multiple year to build relationships with the true top 150 player, your not going to come in and recruit a top 150 player out of the blue his senior year or even junior year your already to late, Miles' first class that he will have built these necessary relationships with will be in 2015 and beyond. No matter how good we were this past season, its not going to change the minds of 2014 recruits we need to prove over multiple years were the real deal not just a flash, remember we are recruiting against bluebloods for these top recruits to nail these top recruits we almost have to pitch a perfect game, and still hope for a few things to go right, the allure of duke, kansas, texas, kentucky, uconn, arizona,florida, unc, and others will always be greater than ours, we just have to strike and find one kid who dosnt care about all their traditions, and media hype those kids are hard to find...i recruiting strategy for this year is just fine, add to what we have, go after a kid or two or decommits hope they come to us, get a grad transfer, and put all the chips in 2015, 2016 and beyond.

http://collegebasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/05/08/kamari-murphys-transfer-another-blow-to-a-sputtering-ok-state-program/

Didn't read through everyone's commments, but quite frankly, 2014 looks very mediocre. We are spending way too much time combing through leftovers and transfer recruits this spring. We can't continue to do that and expect to be a consistent upper-division Big Ten team. I am anxious to see how this summer turns out, and would be very concerned if we don't have at least 2 players signed by fall that were top 250 or better recruits. I'm sure none of this is lost on our staff. They are working hard. And they deserve a long time to turn this program around. But last year's upper-division finish might be an exception rather than the rule for Mile's first 5 years if recruiting success doesn't turn around this summer.

This seems a lot like a "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" kind of scenario. We're still Nebraska Basketball. We need to sustain success before mid to high star talent is going to be beating down our door. But it will give me something to read while I'm pretending to work so have at it.

On mobile but really wish i could arrow up this post. We should add that function to mobile

As I understand it, and per an article in the Chicago Tribune a couple years ago, I don't believe that is the case. I seem to recall it was family related. The Morrows do not strike me as the type that are overly infatuated with getting maximum exposure for their son. And further, Edward himself was quoted not long ago as saying that even if high-majors started banging down his door, he wanted to play for one of the schools that had been with him from the beginning. Minnesota, Nebraska, etc. People seem to keep waiting for the shoe to drop on Morrow and some bluebloods to swoop in and grab him. I'd be more worried about the schools that have been after him as long as we have.

You can read some of the threads, like this one: https://web.archive.org/web/20060625011950/http://hhcdave.proboards54.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1150113856 I forgot how dark and bitter those days were...

What doesn't add up? Wasn't he a known academic question mark from the get go? I thought there was talk that he might not qualify and have to go the JUCO route well before he even signed with us. Here is a post from 2013 Assuming you read the Tunnel Talk this morning. For those who don't subscribe, Robin provide an update/summary of the Elbert situation. Nothing new here just a summary of his final list being delayed and his LSU/Shaq visit. The update on Pinder said the biggest concern right now is whether or not he would qualify academically. They are seeing if his credits/high school work from Australia will transfer and he has yet to take the SAT. Robin said this is a huge question mark with Pinder and like huskerbaseball13 said, he may have to go the JUCO route. It looks like this has been known about for awhile. There are a lot of reasons why he might never end up at Nebraska....him not being good enough for this team currently isn't at the top of them. The book on him is freak athlete with unpolished game...there is always the chance he could become "too good" for Nebraska. Heck, in two years Harriman might be a head coach somewhere else and he could land there. We'll have to take a look at this thread in two years...assuming this board is still a thing in two years.

We're always going to lose out on someone we have at the top of our list...this is the nature of recruiting. We're going to get shot down 4 times for every guy that signs here. If you want to chart progress, look more at the quality of the guys who are shooting us down and/or the teams we are competing for to get this talent. It definitely has improved.

Based on your avatar I think I will call you Mavsker

How people can be negative or down on Coach Miles after the COMPLETE transformation of our program in just two years is mind boggling. Do not doubt him. He has shown no reason to.

Hoiberg didn't go the NCAA tournament his first year at ISU. They were a .500 team, 3-13 in the Big 12 and finished in dead last. He had four players total return from the season before. He brought some difference makers via the transfer route. Ejim was left behind by McDermott. He didn't recruit him. Kinda like Shields, he got a little luck there. But Kane was a transfer. Niang might be his first 4 year stud that he's landed and that wasn't until his third recruiting class. And, btw, ISU has some great hoops fans. Even when they were down that was a tough, tough place to play, up until, probably the Wisconsin game, I'd give ISU the clear edge over NU in the fan category. They also have a fairly new practice facility, only a couple of years older than ours. They're really not that far behind NU in the facilities category and have some actual tradition to sell. Don't sell ISU short, they have some selling points on the hoops side. WSU and Creighton were a core group of players that were there for several years, for he most part and built to this season. That's development over time. CU was more than McDermott. I'm not familiar with UNM enough to comment there. Honestly, the trajectory I see from Miles looks pretty similar to what Hoiberg has done at ISU. Time will tell if he gets there, but I'm not seeing what you're seeing at all. I mean, he's got the first legit NBA talent at Nebraska since Hamilton and Lue were here. That's a pretty big deal, and that happened pretty quickly after he showed on campus. It showed right away for Miles, too.

Diamonds in the rough are still diamonds. See a couple examples ( after a year "in exile" ): Petteway and Pitchford.

Rome was not built in a day.

Sad day for my avatar, though.

It still amazes me people are actually complaining about Miles. Most of the people I see complaining about him are bandwagon fans that just started following Nebraska basketball this season, so I try not to take their opinions as anything other than uninformed.

Doesn't add up. Doubt he ever makes it.