Utah Basketball- Larry Links His Future to In-State Recruits…
Editor’s Note: After I wrote this my hoops guy informed me of a couple of things. The Stutzman kid committed to San Francisco, which is weird. Also the Andrus kid getting a BYU offer almost certainly means he’s headed there. So what does this mean. First it means some of you hoop recruiting sites should update your info. Second, yeah my wife is really pregnant and I missed some stuff. Third, getting Chapman is the be all end all of the Larry era.
It’s summertime and there just isn’t all that much to write about, but something caught my interest the other day.
Utah basketball made it’s first offer for 2015 to Makol Mewien a 6-9 Power Forward who plays at Granger High. So I started looking around at the offers Utah has out for 2014 and 2015. Of the six offers Utah has made, three are to in-state kids and a fourth to a kid in Idaho. The others besides Mewei, Brekkott Chapman who has been offered by everyone else in America, Ryan Andrus a 6-8 Power Forward from American Fork who will be mission bound. The offer is also out to Idaho Falls, Jared Stutzman a 6-5 shooting forward.
Utah also has offers out to two four star kids out of state but we haven’t been close on those kids, so I’ll take a wait and see with them.
Now I hesitate to say too much about this, as anytime anyone says anything that isn’t glowingly positive about Larry and Utah basketball the overprotective lapdogs come out of the woodwork. And I’m generally not in the mood to face another barrage of you hate Larry nonsense.
But I have to wonder, is this really the best way to go? I mean I get Brekkott Chapman, that kid could be a game changer. And I don’t know if it’s just hyperbole but Tony Jones seems to think a great deal about Makol Mewien. But couldn’t we find more talented kids than Andrus and Stutzman? Are these two kids going to make serious improvement for us. (Yes people who are running to yell at me, Andrus and Stutzman will be All-Americans)
It’s just that outside of Chapman, our recruiting feels like Utah St. Combine some Utah kids with some JC’s and play your non-conference schedule all at home against bad teams. And that recipe isn’t going to get us results in the Pac-12.
There seem to be a lot of people in places with power that are going to give Larry a million chances. So my guess is that unless something blows up, if Larry can get to the CBI or NIT, he’ll get a one year extension and get a full five years to make an NCAA tourney. However, unless we land Chapman, or by a miracle get in on an out of state kid we haven’t sniffed, does this even seem close to the recipe to compete with the top of the Pac-12?
It’s an important question.