Fritz says he will focus more on developing high school talent than the portal.
https://twitter.com/WillKunkelFOX/status/1731861741062029580?t=-KHhgQck-gMrwyoeGO3ywQ&s=19
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Me like. Building a culture sounds familiar for some reason…
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He wants UH to be a HS driven program.
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Thank you!!! For the long term sucess. Take that Coogfans.
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Good to hear this. You can’t sustain a high quality program primarily through the portal. The portal is for filling the odd hole here and there. There’s a reason players are in the portal, after all. A good eye can find the occasional diamond, but most portal players are average at best, not good enough to make it at their original program.
High school recruiting, however, is the life blood of a program. The relationships established with HS coaches and programs pay long term dividends. Here’s hoping Frist is successful in building those bridges. The horrible state of our recruiting under CDH leaves much to be desired.
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My Coach Willie Fritz !
Go Coogs !
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Somebody needs to tell the baseball program about this crazy idea!
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The portal taketh away, so at times it is going to hath to giveth back.
It will get old bringing in talented school kids, coaching them up and then watching them go in the portal to a higher bidder.
As Ohio State and OU.
I asked Patrick Paul last night if the Coogs are doomed due to the portal.
He replied, “No I don’t. We are in the fourth largest city in the country and NIL deals are unlimited here.”
So maybe it’s not as bleak as it appears to some.
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Everyone in the comments…
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Well he will need to depend on the portal for a couple of years until he can bring in good recruits especially this year and next
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He will have to have us recruiting in at least the top40 or 50 then
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This year though, he’ll need to sign a lot of JUCOs and portal transfers.
Probably too late to get many more top HS recruits.
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We all knew this… NIL is available. Oil and gas city like Houston of course money is available lol.
You are right Ryon . Holgy said the 2024 HS recruitment has sailed . Maybe so . Let see if Coach Will gets a single HS kid he likes and thinks he can play for him. Tick Tock…Tick Tock !
Go Coogs !
I am expecting a renewed interest with NIL opportunities having WF as coach. The entire program in such a short time period just feels more legitimate and respectable. This should help companies feel more comfortable investing $ with our players. I say this a a former Dana supporter.
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Hope he doesn’t say the “ship has sailed” on this years HS recruiting…
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“I say this as a former Dana supporter.”
Congratulations Tiki,
That is the first step….admitting you had a problem.
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This is exactly what I’ve been saying. You CANNOT build the foundation of your program on the portal like CDH was doing. You have to have a strong culture that will keep more players in house than you otherwise would have. You have to recruit most of your stud players from HS at a place like UH.
No doubt players will come and go in the transfer portal but you have to try to be very selective with it ESPECIALLY since we don’t have top NIL to spend - we are NOT getting the top transfers that the blue bloods are getting. Yeah we can get a good one here and there I’m sure like Manjack but you have to be very careful who you bring in as many more are likely to bust and they are on a shorter timeline to produce than a HS recruit. Plus you always have to consider why they are transferring - could this be a problem at UH too, etc…? It all requires careful consideration not the ala carte menu strategy CDH was using.
Pretty much everything Fritz is saying right now is what I believe in. There is a reason this man has won everywhere he has been and at every level. As long as he can bring in competent coaches around him we will have some winning seasons with him. I’d expect we hover around .500 or maybe slightly below next year but after that we won’t see a losing season as long as he is our HC. I expect to have more wins each successive season over the next 3 years. Something like 5 then 6/7 then 8/9 and we will hover anywhere from 6-10 after that. It will be a great time to be a Houston Cougars football fan again!
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That all sounds great, and I love the idea too.
But if we trust him, we can’t be calling for his head when he is 6-6 in years 3 and 4. The dude needs time, and we don’t tend to be a patient group.
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I looked at cow manure U roster and vast majority are HS recruits. What Sark say they do is bring in about 7-8 portal transfers to fill some holes.
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