This is going to be a weird quibble, but I do kind of always take issue with putting people into absolute buckets based on a decision they make like this. Like saying if he picks Kentucky, he was always an X type of person, or if he chose Virginia, he was always a Y kind of person. I guess if you’re big into predetermination that fits, but if not, you can believe people make choices that shape who they are. Many also make choices that don’t maybe align with their preferences and they quickly course correct.
I guess all that is to say, I don’t know that if a recruit goes one way or another, they were the type of person to always go that way. I came down to deciding between Virginia and another very different school in a different part of the country. It was a close decision. I don’t know that you could say I was a different type of person if the scales had tipped slightly the other way, especially when you consider how imperfect the info provided to folks is and how teenagers’ make decisions. Maybe if the right person had gotten in my ear, my dumb 17 year old self would have made a different choice.
I will say, I agree with you that Kentucky and Virginia are selling very different experiences and different paths to the same destination (hopefully playing pro). I like being in these type of choices in some cases because we can very clearly differentiate our product from the other product. We’re selling a sedan, they’re selling a pickup, now the recruit gets to choose what they want. I don’t love going up against Villanova, for example, cause it feels like we’re both selling sedans, and we’re just trying to convince the recruit which one has better highway mileage.
Also none of what I said probably makes sense. But hope we land Reed Sheppard regardless!
That’s how I feel. Can you imagine if TB and Jay Wright weren’t mostly recruiting the same region? Jalen Brunson and Ty Jerome on the same team. Dre and Nova’s Bridges together. 40-0 would be a real possibility.
I’m probably repeating myself here, but there’s a 100 things that go into every kid’s decisions that we will never know, and never be in a position to second guess. How he gets along with coaches, how he likes the area, relationship with players, academic concerns, etc. etc. etc. No commitment should be taken as a broad indictment of the type of person or player a kid is. He’s a 17 year old making the most important decision of his life thus far, and though we’d like it to be, it’s never as simple as “Play for Tony because he’s the best coach in the game right now.”*
*Unless a kid goes to LSU. Because then he’s definitely just going there for the bag, and that’s that.
One could argue that it didn’t work out for Juzang at Kentucky either. I don’t know that he would have transferred from UVA if he would have signed here. Unlike Jabri, He would have played quite a bit. However, we may have never received Murphy as a transfer either.
The nature of message board threads is that the tangent becomes the main point, so I just want to redirect here a bit. The question being discussed (today) is to what extent who’s on the roster will (and should) affect Sheppard’s decision. One idea on the table is: not much, because it’s going to come down to whether he is a Tony guy or a Cal guy. My idea is: it probably should, and better stated, the respective approaches to roster management, more so than what type of guy you are. (Because I can remember a lot of Bennett-era fan favorites talking about how their dream school was Duke). Or to follow the dialectic, the synthesis is that Reed doesn’t need to decide if he’s a Cal or Tony guy, he needs to decide if he prefers Cal or Tony’s approach to roster management.
If the stories out of Kentucky are true he would’ve transferred back to the LA area anyway. Unless the stories are made up he was homesick to the point he had family from the 757 staying in Lexington to take care of him. Now Charlottesville would’ve been closer to them than Lexington but that’s still far enough away to not be local to him.
Actually, none of those examples change my opinion. First, Kellan Grady was/is a grad transfer. Not the same. Secondly, I think it is worth noting that both Juzang and SKJ transferred out of Kentucky. On the other hand, over the last seven years, how many recruits were pursued seriously by both schools? Since 2015, Kentucky has not offered a single grant to a player who chose Virginia. In that same time, Virginia has offered scholarships to six other high school recruits who picked Kentucky. How serious some of those offers were is questionable. I don’t believe UVa was ever really a consideration for Keldon Johnson or Immanuel Quickly (Virginia offerd 47 high schoolers scholarships in 2018). I also do not know how much effort was put into the recruitments of Jamal Murray, Isaiah Briscoe, or Kahlil Whitney, but they all had offers. I seem to recall some buzz about Wenyen Gabriel, but, again, I cannot remember how serious it was. The bottom line: there isn’t much of an intersection between the sets of recruits offered by each school. It is a small subset. My conclusion is that the qualifying process of each school determines the appeal of that school to each recruit. As I have maintained, each school is selling a different vision to recruits and not many find both that appealing.
You’re ignoring your data. If you didn’t already know your opinion on the topic, and I told you that school A and school B “recruited” (loose definition) 6 or 7 of the same guys in the last 5 or 6 years, and that none of them picked school A, and all of them picked school B**, would your conclusion really be “well I guess they must just be targeting different types of players” ? I suspect not. I suspect if you heard these are top 20-50 guys, you might reasonably conclude that school B is a blue blood and wins battles more often than not.
** Yes, I understood your data is those who picked KY, not all common offers.
I think it is not unusual for Blue Bloods to offer later and their recruits to decide later. HGN has said that TB tends to cut the cord if it looks like the it is going to drag on. I think he wanted Keldon Johnson but he fell into that category. I think maybe he liked Gabriel early and then he blew up and we kind of disappeared from the discussion. I think we were in Quickley’s final 6 or 7 but don’t know if we were active at the end. Don’t know about the other guys. We obviously don’t have a great track record vs. KY. That said I get the feeling that TB and Sheppard have the same kind of chemistry that he had with 2022’s so I am hopeful.
Wherever he goes, he’ll evaluate who’s in front of him in the program and what his fit is and prospects for playing time. But at Kentucky, he’d have to know one or more five stars are coming in right behind him (or maybe same class also). If he hasn’t established himself early on, he may not ever get the playing time he wants. Then again, maybe he’s not worried about that kind of thing. But Kentucky recruiting is a machine.
I’m sure the pandemic may have played a role but we were still early in the pandemic. I believe the lack of playing time may have played a role too. He was getting a little more playing time as the season went on but as Kentucky does they had a bunch of big time recruits coming in next year as well. He may have seen the writing on the wall. As it turns out he made a very good decision
I think the decision is really simple if I was a recruit or recruit’s parent/guardian: only go to true one and done factory (which I think only includes Kentucky and Duke at this point) if I’m more or less guaranteed to be a lottery pick REGARDLESS of how well/how much I play during my year in college. Banchero’s going to be a top 3 pick next draft whether he’s Zion Williamson or Cam Reddish this year on the court. Obviously Shepard doesn’t fit into this category (he’s not in any mock drafts, let alone a lottery pick). History is not particularly kind to Kentucky/Duke recruits with that profile out of high school. Ironically, Kentucky is absolutely the worst place for Shepard to be a legacy. Doubt Cal would have pursued otherwise.
Yeah I saw that too. His trainer posted it. I was debating whether it was commitment or school season starting soon. But the instagram clip was in regards to the list cut
