Utah Utes Basketball: A Day Later, Dumping Hearlihy Still Was a Really Stupid Idea

So we’re 24 hours after we all found out that Utah was doing all it could to get out of the LOI with Harvard-Westlake’s Josh Hearilihy, whom we’d signed in the early signing period.  First we were told that Larry wouldn’t comment.  Then a whole bunch of people who get their information from the coaching staff started hitting various social media sources telling us there are two sides to this story and if we all just knew the real story, which Larry isn’t commenting on but that his staff is clearly is, we’d see its not only a great thing but that Larry was actually helping the kid.

Then Larry decided he would in fact be commenting and went on Voice of the Utes Bill Riley’s show to tell us that they had told Hearilihy about this in February (as if the five months he thought he was a Ute and wasn’t looking for other options is just A-OK).  You can tell from Hearlihy’s comments to the times that I’m sure he and his parents were just fine with this.  Bill Riley, our version of the Iraqi Information Officer then took to twitter to say that it was quite likely Hearilihy would never walk again and Larry is a great American hero (ok maybe this is an exaggeration but only barely).  To top it off we got one more late night comment from Brad Rock about how Larry’s action demonstrated his great basketball mind.

The thing is, they’re all wrong and couldn’t be more wrong.  First, we signed Hearilihy in the early signing period meaning supposedly that he was a kid we really wanted.  You’d think you might do some sort of due diligence on a kid that was supposed to be a centerpiece of your recruiting class.  One might think that a school would not sign a contract with a kid, without doing it.  And if the supposed injury problems happened after the LOI was signed, you still take the kid.  It’s what Rick Majerus did with Mark Rydalch.

Because here is what we have done.  We’ve given the other Pac-12 coaches a really nasty story to tell.  And if we start recruiting high school kids that other Pac-12 schools really want, this is going to be a problem.  At some point, if we want to compete in the Pac-12 we’ll need Pac-12 talent and not just the Pac-12 from this past season.  In addition we’ve pissed off an LA area coach.  Because it was Harvard-Westlake’s coach who let the high school guy at the L.A. Times know about this.  Unless he is the very exception, he talks to other coaches.  LA might be an important recruiting area for us.

And here is what we could have done.  We honor the LOI and we get the kid to Salt Lake where Utah’s doctors can take a look at the kid.  Maybe they’re nothing, you redshirt him and we have the player thought we had.  If not we tell the kid he can finish his education.  It becomes a PR recruiting boost.  And isn’t that what Utah has always supposed to be about, that we do things just a little differently?

Because what are we gaining by dumping him now.  Its not like we’re making room for Shabazz Muhammad and we’ve already made room for Crump and Lenz.  It’s not like we couldn’t find equal to what we’re going to bring in a year from now.  Next year’s team is about Dean, Dotson and God-Willing Crump and Lenz, not about whomever we might find for this scholarship.  This decision is so amazingly short sighted and does so much long term damage, I can’t believe anyone thinks it was possibly a good idea, let alone Larry and his staff.

But when it comes to what people think about Larry, I don’t get much of it.