Refresh my memory, what did he say about the CPS coaches association? I couldn’t find anything related other than a blurb from an SBNation article with a quote from Jabari Parker’s AAU coach stating that he basically knew nothing about Groce nor seemed too inclined to learn anything.
Also discovered during my search that Groce was hired at Akron after he was fired from Illinois. The Zips did not have a good season after a long run of success under Keith Dambrot, who left for Duquesne (why?) after many years at Akron. Not exactly a promising start.
You remember that time for Illinois much better than I do, but yeah, it’s not like Weber is a great coach or anything. But great coaches don’t grow on trees. Weber did do really well with Self’s guys – and of course there is sometimes speculation regarding how Self gets all those Chicago players.
I’m honestly not sure it rose above message boards and stuff, but a good friend of mine is plugged into Chicago city hoops. Without searching too hard, my recollection is that he made an off-hand comment about Robert Smith’s attention to academics (Smith is the long-time coach at Simeon - where Derrick Rose, Jabari Parker, Nick Anderson, Deon Thomas went. They’re currently the #1 program in the state.). This was around the time Rose was winning an MVP and all the funny stories about his SAT shenanigans were getting re-told. The story basically goes that some of the Chicago coaches were in attendance, and the Illinois AD had to run out of the room to try to smooth things over with them.
Yeah, Self obviously has a dirty rep - one thing, Self didn’t actually recruit Chicago very well either (UI’s chronic downfall is that they get eaten alive for Chicago talent on a regular basis) - Deron Williams, Luther Head, Dee Brown, James Augustine, Brian Cook…none were from Chicago. I’m not sure any of Self’s top guys at Illinois were. It wasn’t until he got to Kansas that he actually got one - Cliff Alexander. I think Marquette has actually recruited Chicago better in the past two decades than Illinois has (and obviously Duke).
Not a Groce apologist but there are certainly two sides to the tale of his relationship with Chicago HS coaches. Our own Coach Beilein got off to a rocky start with coaches in the Detroit PSL. There are a lot of moving parts, as well as a lot of agendas to keep track of, when assigning blame and fault in these situations.
I don’t disagree, and obviously his relationship with Smith improved enough for him to get Kendrick Nunn a few years later (for the good that did). And as I noted, Illinois’ inability to recruit Chicago hardly started with him. Just noting, that he seemed to set land-speed records for pissing people off.
Head is from Chicago and Brown and Augustine are from near suburbs, although that could be different than recruiting Chicago itself. But the larger point I absolutely agree with, that Illinois generally doesn’t do well recruiting Chicago and doesn’t have a longstanding connection to it, something people tend to forget when assessing how good a job it is.
Yeah, I’ve always kind of rolled my eyes when national pundits insist that Illinois can be a top job based on the assumption that UI will just clean up in Chicago because it’s the flagship university. It ain’t that way. Champaign is two hours away and might as well be in a different state.
Yeah, I think you’ll find more successful Chicago kids at Marquette and Purdue (both of which are closer to Chicago than Illinois). And if we’re talking “greater Chicago”, lots of kids come from NW Indiana, which is definitely a Chicago suburb, and Painter has made a program off those kids.
Plus how many folks see Notre Dame as a Chicago university. I’m not sure what the draw of Illinois is at this point. It’s not like Champaign Urbana is a draw.
Any coach recruiting Chicago could easily have his head taken off by the bags of money flying from the directions of Calipari, K, and Self. Hard to compete with those deep pockets.
Go SMU!!!
I would like to see Cincinnati go down here.
I like SMU coach Tim Jankovich.
I remember Jankovich raving about Derrick Walton after M dismantled SMU in New York. Inexplicably Walton went into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights shortly thereafter before emerging to save the season.
He’s phenomenal, I can only imagine how good he’d be here. I also like Moyer a lot on cuse. Battle will be a good pro imo. I wonder if he’ll leave this year. If not a team with battle and bazley on the wings is pretty interesting
I think they intentionally remove actual information from those, because every single wired up segment I’ve seen from every coach has been completely useless info.
They can get the HELL below us. Lost 4 of last 6, didn’t show up in their conference tournament, we stomped through ours, they got blown the hell out in their last game. Auburn is dropping for damn sure.
