Horten-Tucker gets Fla St and MSU offers
- Thread starter Max_Power
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Michigan states campus is very beautiful. More established coach. Better girls. You get a B1G education.
NU beautiful campus. Up and coming program. Depending on major best education in the B1G (top rated academic school in the B1G). Proximity to Chicago and Lake Michigan.
There are a ton of reason's he'd pick MSU over NU. Holland outlined a few above. Maybe he doesn't wanna go to college walking distance from his parents could be another reason he might not pick NU.
He said in an interview that he wants to play somewhere close to home. For me, I wanted to be a minimum of 8 hours drive from my parents to avoid the unexpected pop-ins.
Maybe he does not want sit behind a star recruit like Jeremy Langford like Alvin Ellis, another Chicago recruit who chose to go to wrong school when he picked MSU over NU. Your game does not development when you sit on the bench for all four years and play limited minutes. Or maybe he wants to make history at NU.
MSU has better girls? I don't think so unless times have changed drastically. I always thought NU girls were terrific. Smart, fun and great looking.
I grew up in Warrenville and went to North Central College, 3 miles from my parents house and about an 8 minute drive... I only saw them when I wanted to, which was basically when I needed money
If that's all it boiled down to, we'd have a lot more recruiting wins against MSU.
How about this possibility? If Izzo wins a title this season, could he retire? His team will be a Top 3 team in all the polls with Arizona and Duke if they get Bagley or USC if they get Bagley. Just a thought.
Ellis was the name I was trying to recall. Ellis was a nice to have for MSU in his recruiting class. Whoever next thinks about going to MSU in 18 needs to look at Ellis.
That's exactly my point: at NU you DON'T get a Big Ten education. You get a Northwestern education.
In the past, EC. In the past. You gotta realize it's 2018 for these kids.
The basketball/athletic factors are a push now.
No, but they are getting there. And rightfully so.
CCC will have this program in the same tier as Duke before all is said and done.
I wish Football would follow suit.
We're not quite there yet, though we are closer than ever, as evidenced by our recent recruiting.
We'll need to win some B1G titles and get to the final four, send a few players to the league including the lottery before we can begin to call it a push. We will get there, I have no doubt, but there is work to do.
Is that a good thing these days? Do NU biology credits transfer to other schools now. That would have been nice when I was in school.
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Why would we want FB to be on the same tier as DUKE? Aren't we better than them?
You know what I mean.
But, for the sake of clarity on the football side, I would think our goal should be to surpass Stanford in recruiting and on the field performance (our win a few years back not withstanding, I'm talking League championships, end of year rankings, playoff contention).
What championships have we won in basketball? Everyone is excited about our progress but let's not go overboard quite yet.
Whether you want to admit it or not their are enormous challenges to turning around the ship in both major sports that most other schools don't face.
We have two extraordinary coaches, perfect fits for NU. How about we leave it at that?
For northwestern I honestly wouldn't want any different head coach for basketball or football.
We haven't won, but I'm speaking to the trajectory. I'm convinced Collins will get us to the level he became intimately familiar with in his 18 years at Duke. It's only a matter of time.
Fitz? He's had 10 years. And we are doing ok, but I'm not so sure that he'll achieve that Collins projects to have - in hoops, everything is tracking so far to the Coach K plan and trajectory that Duke saw under his mentor, and that trajectory is steeper than what we've seen in football in the last decade. Of course this is speculation, but if the football and basketball programs were stocks, I'd be much higher on hoops right now. Football is a good buy, but I just don't see the same upside at this time. More a reflection of how bullish I'm on Collins and hoops right now, though Fitz does have his facilities coming, and this could be a breakthrough year, so things may change for me by the end of the season. How we end up at the end of the year will be like an earnings report and could very well change the stock's rating.
Football is Exxon Mobil: conservative, dependable dividend, but not gonna make you rich.
Basketball is Airbnb: unproven, promising, and with a high ceiling.
Buy both for portfolio diversification.
In football we have had discussions where it became evident that there are about 5 to 10 schools that are consistently "elite" and that there is a pretty big drop off in talent after that. Every year a program does well and tries to crash the National Championship party but the elites remain a demonstrable cut above.
Does the same apply to Basketball? CC has gotten us to the dance and perhaps to a new level of competitiveness where we can expect to get to the dance regularly (top 50). Is there an elite group that is actually a cut above, a level of performance that we have not seen yet? Can we get there?
Think Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina first tier, then Michigan State, UCLA, Oregon, Villanova second tier. First tier are schools that attract one or two one-and-dones every year, and have Final 4 level talent every year. Second tier are schools that are top 10 quality most every year and Final Four capable most years. Third tier would be the upper half of the Power 5 leagues and consistently competitive non-Power 5 schools that make the NCAA most years, and have occasional flashes of brilliance like Indiana, Purdue, Virginia, etc. I don't see anybody busting the top tier in the near future, certainly not NU. I'd be pleased if the Cats could show the consistency to reach the third tier with some staying power. I like what Collins and company have done so far, and the arena remodel is evidence of administrative commitment. But there is still a lot of work to do to reach that third tier level and remain there over time.
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No quibbles with most of IdahoAlum's choices. But I wouldn't put Oregon in basketball's second tier. Very good lately - like Butler and Gonzaga - but not consistently a power over the long run. Maybe substitute Louisville in the second tier as a more perenniel power.
Agree on Oregon. I'd add Arizona to tier 1 or at least 2. How about Villanova (lately) and Syracuse? Tough list to do, actually. Seems you gotta take the top 1 or 2 from each P5 conference and determine whether they are T1 or T2.
Going through this exercise really got me thinking of how much the Big East misses the days of UConn's BBall dominance, or even Georgetown being perennially strong. Things change in this sport, thats for sure. There are only a few unchanging pieces to the puzzle.
Everything is dependent on the head coach. Always.
Villanova isn't a top tier program. Villanova is blessed with Jay Wright, who apparently is never leaving.
Altman is a great coach, which is why Oregon is good.
Remember how bad, and for how long, Alabama football was? They're not good because they're Alabama, they're good because Nick Saban is a master.
If you look at Michigan State historically - they are such a level ahead of where they were when Izzo took over. Pre-Izzo - nice program, Heathcote was a nice coach, and of course the Magic years were Magical. But Izzo is a great, great coach, and we forget those "just fine" decades under Jud.
Indiana has structural advantages, perhaps - but Crean is a crappy coach. The General was a great coach. We'll see what the new guy does.
There is no program bigger than its head coach. Perhaps a program imposes a floor - but the ceiling is the coach's and the coach's alone.
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I agree. A great coach can make any program great. I think about Calipari and Memphis. But great coaches get noticed and great programs pursue them with $$$$. And if that is not enough, the coach gets sold on thinking how much better he or she could do at a program with a cachet. So great programs usually end up with great coaches.
"I'm not sure I agree 100% with your detective work Lou." (Fargo Movie)
When you are the one school in a conference of 14 schools that will admit less than 50% of the players on the other teams, it's not all about the coach.
I like this take on the coaches. I love when this happens in basketball (and somewhat in football too). Some school you think would never ever be good is suddenly good. Then you find out that their coach is somebody you've heard of. I remember when that happened with Larry Brown at SMU. I had no idea he was there. Then suddenly they were good. Now, he might be a sleazy guy, but sleaze alone doesn't get you 25 wins a year.
The program sets the floor. In NU's case, the floor is 1-15 in conference, though KON was a negative WAR head coach leading to an 0-16 record.
Maybe MSU's floor is 4 wins. But KON could put together a four-win season at MSU... Collins could be a national championship coach at MSU - or at NU.
"And I guess that was your accomplice in the wood-chipper there."
"See how you like it. Absolute f***ing silence."
A great football example is Frank Solich at Ohio. It's ten years back now, but Ohio went from generations of garbage to a MAC bowl team. June Jones did a similar thing at SMU.
I bet Les Miles wins the Sun Belt or the MAC as a head coach sometime in the next five years.
Coaching absolutely plays a role. But as somebody noted above, the great programs will ultimately get great coaches because they have great resources: facilities, budget, deep pocketed donors, big fan bases and history. They might have a few down years with the wrong coach (North Carolina with Matt Doherty) but eventually they will make the home run hire that restores them to their rightful place in the universe. Similarly a lower tier program might find a great coach and rise to a higher level for awhile (Marquette and Al Mc Guire) but they eventually sink back to their normal standing after that coach leaves.
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