2012 C Isaiah Austin Set to Announce Monday Night
It's no secret to those who have been following Texas basketball recruiting that landing big men is a major priority for both the 2011 and 2012 classes.
Rick Barnes and company will find out Monday night if they will be receiving some help on the interior in 2012 when one of the top-ranked players in the class makes his announcement -- C Isaiah Austin.
The five finalists are Houston, Baylor, Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma State. Baylor was the last visit for Austin and has commented to those close to him "lots of people are going to be surprised."
almost 2 years ago
Wescott Eberts (GoBR)
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This is happening way to soon
For my liking. Don’t want my dreams crushed too quickly, if it’s not UT.
The twitter page this fanshot links to says
“Isaiah Austin will be choosing from finalists Baylor, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, UConn and Arizona tomorrow night.”
I’m not an avid basketball recruitnik but this doesn’t seem to say a lot for our chances.
Meant to link to
Evan Daniels. Try his Twitter. There seems to be some disagreement about whether or not Texas is in the final group. Probably not a good sign.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Aug 8, 2010 7:25 PM CDT up reply actions
Completely off-topic
put probably the best place to ask a longhorn basketball question at this point.
Retroactively reading some draft analysis, it seems like the feeling about Bradley in Boston is “He was a #1 recruit coming out of high school, and he was coached by Rick Barnes so of course he didn’t live up to his potential”. Now I’ve always gotten the impression that the consensus on Barnes was that he isn’t one of the best basketball coaches, but he certainly gets the job done to some degree, although I admittedly may have been only reading things through burnt orange glasses. It was interesting seeing some unbiased scouts using Barnes’ understood ineptitude as an upside for Bradley. What exactly is being referred to when people discuss his coaching problems?
If you're so sure of what it ain't, how about telling us what it am!
The criticisms are mostly offensive
because he doesn’t run an identifiable “system” like most college coaches do and he gives his players a lot of freedom. Personally, I get frustrated sometimes with him, but I think a lot of this stuff is overblown and this whole meme really took off when Bill Simmons was ripping on Barnes all the time when he was watching Kevin Durant during KD’s year in Austin. And while some of those criticisms were well founded, it was a bit over the top.
If you look at the body of work with Barnes in Austin, I can’t think of a ton of examples of guys who were supposed to develop into superstars or top players and never did. In fact, I would say that players like James Thomas and Royal Ivey really define Barnes as a coach and those were guys who really blossomed under Barnes. In fact, there have been a lot of people who think that Barnes should return to recruiting those type of players, the program guys.
As for Bradley, ESPNU had him terribly overrated — Wall should have been the top player in the country by a wide margin. I think a lot of factors contributed to his supposed lack of development and I don’t think many of them really had much to do with Barnes, Bradley was just a flawed player to begin with and wasn’t going to have the opportunity at Texas to develop his point guard skills. His other main problems seemed to be mental and had to do with his confidence and Barnes let him play through all that, so I’m not sure why he would get the blame for that. Maybe for failing to adequately develop Hamilton and Brown, but not Bradley.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Aug 8, 2010 10:24 PM CDT up reply actions
This is an excellent reply, GOBR...
Simmons gave ammo to Barnes haters forever based on his love affair with Kevin Durant potentially being a Boston Celtic. It’s incredible how powerful the “Barnes sucks as a coach” meme developed after he kept lobbing shot after shot at Barnes.
Here’s my comment from after the draft…
The “Bradley sucked because of Barnes” comment from Simmons was to be expected…I even told a friend of mine that he would find a way to rip on Barnes a few times before his draft diary was even published. Bill Simmons watched exactly one season of Texas Basketball, which was because his team was tanking for a chance at Kevin Durant. And that’s the key here.
In my opinion, Simmons’ schtick over criticizing Barnes all started because he was mad the team didn’t just give the ball to Kevin Durant for every possession of every game. Simmons was watching us to watch KD, and, like a lot of people, got caught up in the idea that Durant could score 35-40 points a game if he was allowed to just do his thing. Of course, Barnes said he couldn’t do that because he was trying to develop a TEAM (with six freshmen) instead of just one individual player.
Simmons spent an entire season saying he was a fan of Texas, but, in reality, he was only a fan of Kevin Durant. I dont know why Barnes and Bradley didnt click, or why Avery fell off last year, but I think Simmons’ blanket assertion that Bradley’s stock fell because he played for Barnes is ridiculous.
I think Barnes is an excellent coach
I have seen him turn nobodies into viable college PGs. Last year I think he had bad team chemistry, with a bunch of “me” guys and a couple who thought they would be one and done. Still managed to make the tourney with all that turmoil. The negative is, that it was the most talented team I have seen in Austin and should have competed for a national title. I would love it if you guys got rid of Barnes for somebody else. The only people who I think could do better than him would be Calipari, and BCG. When this Isiah Austin kid commits to Baylor can we all just agree that Drew is buying players and be done with it?
Will post something when he decides
but don’t want to clutter up the front page at the moment. Announcement set for 6:45 CST on CBS College Sports. All signs point to Baylor. I’ll be covering it first on Twitter, so if you aren’t following me @GhostofBigRoy, ask yourself why the heck not and then I’ll go ahead and throw something up here.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Aug 9, 2010 6:28 PM CDT reply actions
Still waiting on the announcement
Looks like it will be an hour later than what was being reported on Twitter.
by Wescott Eberts (GoBR) on Aug 9, 2010 7:23 PM CDT reply actions
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