A Sea Of Red

A few of you will be tempted to applaud sarcastically on hearing that we are going after this 6´9 post player from Centreville, VA Sam Berlin.

http://www.libertyflamesnation.com/2013 ... erlin.html

He doesn´t blow you away with his athleticism, but it looks like he knows how to use his size, and has a nice touch on his midrange jumper.

We are also interested in Phillip Haynes, a 6´7 240 PF from Raleigh NC, described by one analyst as a ¨meat eater¨ who ¨looks like he could put a hand on the ground on Sundays¨.

http://www.libertyflamesnation.com/2013 ... illip.html

If you have been following recruiting at all, you know that the Raleigh Durham área has tons of talent, and Layer and his staff are all over it.

Now, do a Google maps search for directions from Lynchburg to both Raleigh and Centreville and tell me which one is a local recruit.

A question for ballcoach, purple and the rest of you who like to harp on our not recruiting locally. Do you know of any kids with comparable talent within an hours drive of Lynchburg who would even give Liberty a second look? If you do, I´m gunna pull a BJ here and recommend that you shoot an email to our basketball office. I´m pretty sure they would like to know about it.

Don't know where Centreville is, but to say Raleigh is local is using the term "local" rather liberally.

Umm...I think that is his point in making the commentary that he did...and for the record both are approximately 3 hours away from Lynchburg

Raleigh is almost 50 miles closer, and by Googles calculations about 45 minutes shorter drive, although they say Raleigh is 3 hours, but I´ve made the drive to RDU airport dozens of times, and it is normally 2 hours and 15 minutes. Add about 20 minutes to Raleigh. Of course in fairness most of the times I made that trip were in the pre dawn hours to catch an AM flight, so there wasn´t much traffic.

Unfortunately, when it comes to D1 talent this is about as local as it gets most of the time. Does anyone actually believe we wouldn´t be after them if they lived CLOSER? We are pursuing them because they are players we like who apparently have at least to some extent recipricated some interest. I´m sure we would be after either of them with equal or more enthusiasm if they were from Bedford or AltaVista.

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Don't know where Centreville is, but to say Raleigh is local is using the term "local" rather liberally.

Centreville is in Fairfax County (NOVA) and my point is that it is actually substantially further from the burg than Raleigh.

olldflame wrote:

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Don't know where Centreville is, but to say Raleigh is local is using the term "local" rather liberally.

Centreville is in Fairfax County (NOVA) and my point is that it is actually substantially further from the burg than Raleigh.

So your point for the post was a geography lesson? Sounds like something stupid I would do in the name of trolling.

olldflame wrote:Raleigh is almost 50 miles closer, and by Googles calculations about 45 minutes shorter drive, although they say Raleigh is 3 hours, but I´ve made the drive to RDU airport dozens of times, and it is normally 2 hours and 15 minutes. Add about 20 minutes to Raleigh. Of course in fairness most of the times I made that trip were in the pre dawn hours to catch an AM flight, so there wasn´t much traffic.

Unfortunately, when it comes to D1 talent this is about as local as it gets most of the time. Does anyone actually believe we wouldn´t be after them if they lived CLOSER? We are pursuing them because they are players we like who apparently have at least to some extent recipricated some interest. I´m sure we would be after either of them with equal or more enthusiasm if they were from Bedford or AltaVista.

Actually if you paid attention instead of spouting off because you like to troll, youd see that this was the point

lynchburgwildcats wrote:

olldflame wrote:

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Don't know where Centreville is, but to say Raleigh is local is using the term "local" rather liberally.

Centreville is in Fairfax County (NOVA) and my point is that it is actually substantially further from the burg than Raleigh.

So your point for the post was a geography lesson? Sounds like something stupid I would do in the name of trolling.

Apparently a geography lesson is needed. There are complaints that we don´t recruit locally. Then the people complaining acknowledge the lack of truly local talent but lament that we aren´t signing players from the 757 or NOVA. I have tried on a couple of occasions to point out that we work the talent rich Raleigh área VERY hard and with some success, and that it is closer to our campus than either of those places. It just happens to be in another state.

Why do people even care about recruiting locally when it's a national university? Pure idiocy.

lynchburgwildcats wrote:Why do people even care about recruiting locally when it's a national university? Pure idiocy.

I´m pretty much with you this time (except for the idiocy part). Based on his past posts on the subject I´d guess Sly would concur as well. IMHO we should never take a player just because he is local if we can sign someone who is better, whether they are from North Carolina, Texas or Lithuania.

Some people differ strongly however.

Shuk, The mindset behind those (like ballcoach...by the way, where is he these days anyway?) who clamor for Liberty to recruit more locally is that we should be able to keep local talent at home (and by that I mean players in the Lynchburg area as well as the 757 where I originate from).

BJWilliams wrote:Shuk, The mindset behind those (like ballcoach...by the way, where is he these days anyway?) who clamor for Liberty to recruit more locally is that we should be able to keep local talent at home (and by that I mean players in the Lynchburg area as well as the 757 where I originate from).

These days, most Lynchburg area players can't even hack it in D3 when they get there. Won't believe the # of Lynchburg players I've seen go D3 and never amount to anything but bench warmer or quitter turned intramural stud.

Which is frankly why you dont see a ton of guys from the area making it onto LU's roster, with the exception maybe of coach's kids. Really in the last few years there have only been a couple "cant-miss" players from this area that we could have gotten at Liberty.

Probably the most talented basketball player to come out of Lynchburg in the last several years isn´t playing college basketball. He is the QB at VT.

If one had to rank the level of talent produced by Lynchburg of the major high school sports to the area, basketball would be pretty close to the bottom. Heck, even lacrosse does better and in the grand scheme of things it is barely out of its infancy, if even that, in Lynchburg.

olldflame wrote:A few of you will be tempted to applaud sarcastically on hearing that we are going after this 6´9 post player from Centreville, VA Sam Berlin.

http://www.libertyflamesnation.com/2013 ... erlin.html

He doesn´t blow you away with his athleticism, but it looks like he knows how to use his size, and has a nice touch on his midrange jumper.

We are also interested in Phillip Haynes, a 6´7 240 PF from Raleigh NC, described by one analyst as a ¨meat eater¨ who ¨looks like he could put a hand on the ground on Sundays¨.

http://www.libertyflamesnation.com/2013 ... illip.html

If you have been following recruiting at all, you know that the Raleigh Durham área has tons of talent, and Layer and his staff are all over it.

Now, do a Google maps search for directions from Lynchburg to both Raleigh and Centreville and tell me which one is a local recruit.

A question for ballcoach, purple and the rest of you who like to harp on our not recruiting locally. Do you know of any kids with comparable talent within an hours drive of Lynchburg who would even give Liberty a second look? If you do, I´m gunna pull a BJ here and recommend that you shoot an email to our basketball office. I´m pretty sure they would like to know about it.

Short answer: Yes I do. It's not incumbent on me to recruit. They get paid plenty of money to do it so let them do it.
Local is subjective but let me ask you, if you see a VA or an NC behind a name, which one would YOU think is local. Again, I'm not saying stock the roster with local talent, but you make things more difficult for you when you can't have someone the community has heard of on your team. Did I say start? No. Did I say be All American? No. So, if you think in those terms maybe you will understand the mindset. In your mind you basically think there is no one within an hour radius better then who we currently have on the roster. That's even taking in to account kids who would want to play at LU.

Alumni bring prospective recruits to coach´s attention all the time Purple. Sometimes it actually helps, but usually they were already well aware of them. Like you said it´s their job. I don´t buy the idea that our staff has chosen to systematically ignore local talent. My guess is they know about the players you are referring to and simply have a different evaluation of their talents.

I lived in Lynchburg for over 35 years, and never cared for a split second if we had players from Virginia on our roster. I guess it might be different if you grew up in the área and followed your old HS teams, but for the most part I think support for local players will be mainly limited to family and close friends.

I'm confident to a 99.9% level if there was D1 talent in the greater Lynchburg area that at least one coach at Liberty would know about him. If not, then the entire staff is incompetent.

olldflame wrote:Alumni bring prospective recruits to coach´s attention all the time Purple. Sometimes it actually helps, but usually they were already well aware of them. Like you said it´s their job. I don´t buy the idea that our staff has chosen to systematically ignore local talent. My guess is they know about the players you are referring to and simply have a different evaluation of their talents.

I lived in Lynchburg for over 35 years, and never cared for a split second if we had players from Virginia on our roster. I guess it might be different if you grew up in the área and followed your old HS teams, but for the most part I think support for local players will be mainly limited to family and close friends.

Which is how you build new fan support. If you have a casual fan who knows/has seen a local kid play they will follow that kid if he stays local.

Getting local fans is great but when local kid is starting on a 4-20 team that only goes so far

olldflame wrote:
We are also interested in Phillip Haynes, a 6´7 240 PF from Raleigh NC, described by one analyst as a ¨meat eater¨ who ¨looks like he could put a hand on the ground on Sundays¨.

http://www.libertyflamesnation.com/2013 ... illip.html

A question for ballcoach, purple and the rest of you who like to harp on our not recruiting locally. Do you know of any kids with comparable talent within an hours drive of Lynchburg who would even give Liberty a second look? If you do, I´m gunna pull a BJ here and recommend that you shoot an email to our basketball office. I´m pretty sure they would like to know about it.

1. Pause (to the first part)
2. I know I dont harp on it, and it was not directed to me, but there is plenty of talent within 4 hours. (I know its not within an hour, but that is rarely the case for any school. There are some within an hour, but not anything that much better than anything we have.)

I agree that there is a lot of talent within 4 hours TBGBG, but I doubt if much of it could realistically be called local. Besides most (but not all) ofVA, that would include much of NC and WV and a bit of SC and MD.

On our roster next year we will have 3 players from that área. That would be Ethan Layer, Burrus from NC and Roberts from MD.

We will have 4 from FL. There is a reason for that. It´s Layer´s home state and he has maintained a lot of connections there. FL has been pretty good to us, and there is definately talent there.

We will have 3 international players, all of them are bigs, and each came to LU by a different route. Ogukwe through the HS system, Coronado through JUCO and Gielo directly from the club system in Poland. Let´s face it, there are only so many D1 calibre big guys coming out of HS each year and it´s tough for a mid major to compete for their services. LU has a long history of finding talent in the post overseas.

We will have 2 from Texas. This is another long established recruiting ground for us, going back to RD and continuing with Eaker. With Omar Mance now on staff, I expect we will continue to hit the Lone Star state hard.

We will have one each from NY and IN, but both actually were recruited from JUCOS in different states.

In looking at the players we are targeting for next years big recruiting class, right now it looks like we are hitting NC hard. If that pays off, our recruiting footprint will be more ¨local¨but I don´t see TX, FL or the WORLD going away. It would it have been amazing to sign a local kid with elite talent and LU ties like Logan Thomas, but it just wasn´t going to happen. If we can build the program up over the next few years, maybe we will have a better chance with the next one to come along, because they are few and far between in Central VA.

Nice optimism about signing elite kids from the area. Maybe if we had a history of taking a local product we'd have a better chance. I love Ethan but not sure a coaches kid counts. He's got crazy bb IQ but wasn't really known in the area.

I don´t think the next elite local BB player to come along will give a rip whether or not we have another local kid or 2 sitting at the end of our bench. He will care a lot more if we have talent that will help him win games and get to the dance.

olldflame wrote:I don´t think the next elite local BB player to come along will give a rip whether or not we have another local kid or 2 sitting at the end of our bench. He will care a lot more if we have talent that will help him win games and get to the dance.

I completely disagree. While he will care if we have a winning record, lots of teams can offer that. It's one of the basics of recruiting that you do what you need to do to protect your own back yard. What if the kid sitting at the end of the bench is a friend? Or from the same school. It's recruiting 101 quite frankly