MBB: Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference

[piperinsider]

Sorry to go back to back...but I had one more question for you Drake...I was interested to see your winner for quote of the week...just wondering if you were poking fun at the SJU radio guys or the big lebowski as he has been referred to or???

Eight-year-olds, dude.

[piperinsider]

A little birdie says there is a frosh on the Hamline football roster that would look nice in a basketball jersey. Since he was a state partcipant in track, I would assume basketball is out.

He averaged nearly 17 ppg for a state tournament bound team last season.

[TommieHoops4Life]

This is better suited on the football board, but for any of you who don't get over there and are interested, St. John's did everything it could to lose to Carleton at Laird Stadium on Saturday.

Kofoed threw three INTs, two of which were nearly returned for TDs, and the Johnnies won 10-7 on a 1-yard TD with 56 seconds left in regulation. SJU did not look like the No.3 team in the nation, much less a team that had been a week removed from putting up 50+ on the Cobbers.

[localcoach]

PI - I assume you're referring to Alex Williams from Lester Prairie?  He's a nice athlete although I'm not sure he would be able to help HU too much this season.  BTW - While at a recent Piper football game I was told that the coaching staff has been very active this fall recruiting.  Apparently Coach Whitmore plans to recruit nationally. 

Not much other news to offer the board.  I was checking the various team sites for rosters but SMU appears to be the only one with a current list. 

[concordia of the north]

Cobber guys that know a lot more than me about football and this year's team say the moorhead crew isn't quite the same as the team that legitimately battled st. john's  from 02-06

[miacwatchmen]

PI - I assume you're referring to Alex Williams from Lester Prairie?  He's a nice athlete although I'm not sure he would be able to help HU too much this season.  BTW - While at a recent Piper football game I was told that the coaching staff has been very active this fall recruiting.  Apparently Coach Whitmore plans to recruit nationally. 

Not much other news to offer the board.  I was checking the various team sites for rosters but SMU appears to be the only one with a current list. 

I can't wait to see how that goes for the Hamline football program!! 

[Drake Palmer]

Watch - I'm sure leaving out the operative word "basketball" was just an oversight on Local's part.  But hey, targeted, national recruiting isn't such a wild idea.  Consider how much talent St. Olaf has managed to successfully recruit for their football teams in the past 3-4 years.  Is this the year the Oles go up to C-ville & smack the Js around?!  Too bad I have other obligations on Saturday.

But I digress, back to hoops.  With Coach Whitmore's ties to the NY area, it would be a natural recruiting hotbed for him to woo some top notch small college talent to go west for their* education & hoops.  If he's able to sustain any type of recruiting momentum for several years, it might dispel the notion a few posters suggested that Hamline isn't willing to adequately fund their admission/ athletics recruiting budgets.

Over the next few seasons it'll be interesting to watch the younger MIAC coaching Turks put their stamp on their programs – Griess at Augsburg, Whitmore at Hamline, & Trewick at SMU.  At SMU, Coach Trewick looks like he's continuing the longstanding Redbird tradition of recruiting the parochial schools out of the Chi-town area.  That's a nice pipeline to have, but thus far it doesn't seem to have paid big dividends on the court.  It would be nice if SMU could supplement their roster with a few more top MN &WI kids, especially if it would make their programs more competitive. 

In looking over the SMU roster, one FY name that I noticed is Ralph Crews.  Somewhere I recall reading or heard someone say that he's supposed to be the real deal as a pass-first, tough, quick PG. Anybody in the know, Kneez?  Otherwise, it looks like more guards for the Birds, a "string bean" forward, 6-7 190lb Pat Connolly out of Chicago, & a "tight end" built post guy, 6-5 220lb Ben Nieman Clear Lake, IA.

* Edited for GS. 

[Willy Wonka]

Otherwise, it looks like more guards for the Birds, a "string bean" forward, 6-7 190lb Pat Connolly out of Chicago, & a "tight end" built post guy, 6-5 220lb Ben Nieman Clear Lake, IA.

If you're trying to say someone that size can't excel at receiver, I'm going to have to disagree

[piperinsider]

PI - I assume you're referring to Alex Williams from Lester Prairie?  He's a nice athlete although I'm not sure he would be able to help HU too much this season.  BTW - While at a recent Piper football game I was told that the coaching staff has been very active this fall recruiting.  Apparently Coach Whitmore plans to recruit nationally. 

Not much other news to offer the board.  I was checking the various team sites for rosters but SMU appears to be the only one with a current list. 

I was. Saw him play once, but it was in a Class A playoff game. He looked good there, but yeah, he might be a bit overmatched.

[Drake Palmer]

Otherwise, it looks like more guards for the Birds, a "string bean" forward, 6-7 190lb Pat Connolly out of Chicago, & a "tight end" built post guy, 6-5 220lb Ben Nieman Clear Lake, IA.

If you're trying to say someone that size can't excel at receiver, I'm going to have to disagree

Nah, not at all.  Like Local, I left out a word I should have included - it should have read something to the effect: "more guards for the Birds, plus a stringbean post, & a beefy, tight end-like post player..."

I don't know the kid's game at all but based on his size, if he was a footballer, I'd guess he'd be more of a typical D3 TE vs. a WR.  I think you'd have to admit, wide receivers of your size are more of the exception than the norm in D3.  Although Gant & Schmeising at STO are both fairly large WRS.  In the NFL, big ol' Calvin Johnson of the Lions could give Adrian Peterson of the Vikes a very serious run for the NFC Rookie of the year award. 

[VOJ]

Watch - I’m sure leaving out the operative word “basketball” was just an oversight on Local’s part.  But hey, targeted, national recruiting isn’t such a wild idea.  Consider how much talent St. Olaf has managed to successfully recruit for their football teams in the past 3-4 years.  Is this the year the Oles go up to C-ville & smack the Js around?!  Too bad I have other obligations on Saturday.

Drake...come on...this is not the year that the Oles smack the J's...could they win, yea they could if the following 3 things that happen in every Johnnies loss happen:

1.  The J's don't execute on offense or defense with success

2.  The J's turn the ball over(see the 4 vs Carleton this past weekend, and the 8 at Whitewater two years ago and the three last year at Whitewater)

3.  The other team plays exceptionally well.

Otherwise Drake it will be the J's by 14 or more...

[Gregory Sager]

With Coach Whitmore's ties to the NY area, it would be a natural recruiting hotbed for him to woo some top notch small college talent to go west for ther education & hoops.

I'm not sure that I'd call Rochester a "recruiting hotbed". Like the rest of upstate NY, Rochester's got some good prep basketball players here and there, but it's not what I'd consider to be a goldmine by any stretch of the imagination. Plus, there's such a plethora of schools in upstate NY (both D3 and other levels) that the talent tends to be a little picked-over. These two facts go a long way towards explaining why the East Region is the red-headed stepchild of D3 men's basketball. (The traditional power of the region, the University of Rochester, follows the UAA modus operandi of recruiting on a national basis.)

Whitmore recruited most of his players from the Rochester metro area, with a smattering of players from the Buffalo and Syracuse metro areas as well (including two players on last year's roster from my alma mater, Liverpool). That's in keeping with the institutional profile of SUNYAC schools; the vast majority of SUNY students attend a campus within 100 miles of mom and dad, and Brockport St.'s location in suburban Rochester makes it even more of a commuter school / suitcase school. Only two of Whitmore's 2006-07 players were downstaters, and downstate NY (esp. NYC) is the so-called "recruiting hotbed" in the Empire State. I don't know if Whitmore made recruiting trips downstate, or if he has contacts down there, but my guess is that his ability to expose downstate kids to Brockport St. was extremely limited -- and the appeal of the school to downstate kids would be limited as well. Midwesterners think that all northeastern states are dinky in size, and as a result they're always surprised by how big New York really is: Rochester is a drive of five and a half hours from the Big Apple (and it takes a lot longer to get there on the Thruway in the middle of a typically snowy upstate winter, believe me).

Perhaps Whitmore does have some great coaching connections that he can exploit, and perhaps he is held in high enough esteem by western New York high school coaches for him to establish a pipeline for Hamline. I'd just rein in the talk of Rochester being a "hotbed" for prep hoops talent on the D3 level, especially in light of how much local recruiting competition Whitmore would have for those players.

[Drake Palmer]

Greg - Thanks for the NY HS preps recruiting background, but I never said Rochester, NY, I simply said New York.  (And I noticed a typo in my previous post you quoted which I'll need to fix.  )  In a previous post LocalCoach stated he's heard Hamline was going to recruit nationally for their basketball program. I was simply suggesting that with Whitmore's background, New York would be a logical option.  Where he would go in NY I don't have the foggiest idea.  For all I know, he might turn to Florida as St. Olaf has for their football team.

FWIW –here's an interesting article on St Olaf's football team recruiting practices.

St. Olaf Florwegians

An excerpt from the article reads...

...When I got here, I felt we needed to do something different than everyone else was doing," Meidt said. "So I researched schools like Trinity in Texas and Wheaton in the Chicago area, and some other high-end academic schools who've been really successful on the football field.

"What I found in each of their cases -- even at Trinity, even though some of the greatest football players in the country come from Texas -- is that they had fairly national rosters. We're limited to three full-time recruiters. We said, 'We'll pick a spot and go after it."

So perhaps Whitmore will do the same, pick a spot in NY, or elsewhere & work it. This targeted recruiting seems to be working somewhat for the Oles, Wheaton & most schools in the UAA.  Although, Hamline would really have to open up the checkbook if they wanted to recruit like schools in UAA.  My guess is Hamline will concentrate on 1 or 2 key areas nationally, & tirelessly recruit the upper Midwest.

[Drake Palmer]

More odds & ends...

Since it is October, I've started my occasional scanning of the MIAC websites to check on roster updates. In addition to the SMU Birds, here are other rosters that have been posted:

Low, low turnout at Carleton, only 10 players listed on the roster. However, they do nab yet another potential FY of the year in Carter Biewen of Armstrong or Seth Jonker from Eastview. Problem is they both play wing/forwards as does Zach Johnson, Tommy Drake & Bryan Rosett. One potential guard recruit??  Who's going to be the PG for the Knights ths year?

Carleton   
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Mac's numbers look respectable - 13 players listed on the roster.  But in keeping with their national & international recruiting flavor, none of the players are from MN - Scots

Who's going to step up & provide those sparkplug minutes like Jesse Hollander & Lars Johnson?
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Snow - you're slipping in keeping us up to date on things happening over at Cretin & Summit. 

Finally what was rumored about a month or so ago came true -  Sweeney hits the Bigs

[Gregory Sager]

So perhaps Whitmore will do the same, pick a spot in NY, or elsewhere & work it. This targeted recruiting seems to be working somewhat for the Oles, Wheaton & most schools in the UAA.

Wheaton doesn't "target" specific regions for recruiting purposes. The Wheaton coaching staff pursues leads from coast to coast wherever they may be, and the roster tends to look like it was put together by darts thrown at a Rand-McNally wall map as a result. The UAA schools do "target" a bit, in that you're more apt to see New England kids on the Brandeis roster, northeastern kids on the Rochester roster, midwestern kids on the Chicago and Wash U rosters, etc. But they all still recruit on a coast-to-coast basis.

If Whitmore was to use a New York State pipeline, it'd almost have to be Rochester-based (with, as I said, perhaps some Syracuse and Buffalo kids thrown in). After all, you recruit where your contacts are -- and that's where Whitmore's Brockport St. contacts are located.