I was looking at the list and not one player picked Houston. Maybe 2022 will be better?
Maybe Sampson didnt pick them
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You beat me to it!
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These lists arenât everything, and has been very effected by covid. Ramon Walker is the best player from Houston in this class, and we got him. Heâs probably an ESPN Top 100 in a non-covid year. If anything, this stuff benefits the staff, allowing us to find the super talented players who havenât gotten as much exposure.
lack of aau didnt allow alot of kids to blowup⊠weâve never been great at picking up multi-year touted recruits⊠we tend to get underrated juniors, who then blowup in the aau of their junior yearâŠwithout real aau this year a ton of players fell through the cracks
hinton, mills, mark, shead were essential low 3 stars before their junior year aauâŠand we offered before they blew up and after in aau got their 4th starâŠif they had come in this year weâd be talking about them being low 3star recruits
Letâs see. In 1980:
Clyde Drexler was recruited by Texas Tech, New Mexico St. and UH.
No Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA, Duke, not even UT or Aggie.
Akeem Olajuwon was recruited by pretty much no one. A friend of GVL told him about Akeem. According to Wikipedia, he arrived at the airport, called UH and was told to get a cab and we would meet with him and have a work out to see if he could play.
Back then when UH got M. Young and Drexler, Young was the star recruit. The year before UH got Rob Williams who was one of the most highly sought after players as a guard. But the best, most highly recruited player in Drexlerâs class was a kid named Mike Wacker out of San Marcos, went to UT and they were 14-0 when he got injured. I donât think they won another game without him that year. He later became All SWC in 1984-85 after two years of rehabilitation.
Heck, UH missed out on the top recruit in Texas that year and had to settle for an unkown player from Africa and a player that only a handful of schools wanted.
Oh, couldof, shouldof. UH was just âthis closeâ from having a really super class by adding four and five star recruits to go with Michael Young in 1980.
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Comparing recruiting to the early 2000âs to now is not fair. To compare to âback in the dayâ 40 years ago is not even close to being apples to apples. You arenât even comparing fruits.
Kids are getting noticed in 7th grade. The internet, aau ball, shoe teams, they drive the talent. Under the radar just does not exist anymore.
Even low 3 star players are known everywhere and they play ball with two and no star kids. Clyde was a stud in high school. If it was today he would be all over the recruiting services. Hakeem, sorry, Akeem would have been noticed by nba Africa.
Now coaches can coach up a kid like I truly believe Sampson does. But at the same time it takes a different talent to coach the egos of one and domes like coach k or Calipari. I think folks like Juwan and Penny have found that out the hard way sometimes.
Now the trick is to find a middle ground. At Indiana and OU Sampson got some big recruits and I expect that he will find some more here. Grimes was a big recruit. Mark was a big recruit. We will get more. We will also find some guys like Cheney and DJ that need a new scene and a new situation and will be awesome.
I am critical of Dana and his recruiting but SampsonâŠSampson I donât worry about at all.
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Buyercoog, youâre right on all accounts. One of the things I like about this board is the number of long-time fans, who are knowledgeable.
There were media reports that Larry Micheaux signed with New Mexico State. Fortunately for UH it was a commitment and he signed with UH.
Fending off New Mexico State back then wasnât easy. They were coached by Weldon Drew, who won his last 78 games at Kashmere High School before arriving at Las Cruces.
Drexler played center at Sterling. Maybe thatâs why he was under recruited. But Drexler was a player back then and Guy Lewis recognized it. Drexler lacked an outside shot but he could jump out of the gyn. I saw him play in the Houston Jaycees Tournament and was impressed.
What I couldnât figure out is how UNC, Duke, and Kentucky fared so poorly in 2021 when their roster is littered with McDonaldâs all Americans. Even more of a tribute to Houston for Fielding a top 4 team this year.
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I wonder how many Micky D All Woopydos from the last few years will be sitting by their TV today watching the Houston Cougars in the final four.
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Lol. Iâm pretty sure he wanted Aidoo for starters.
Texas made it to #5 before Wackerâs injury.
Young is the one who told our coaches about his friend Clyde. Up to that point Clyde only had an offer from Sam.
When TeeTee heard about Giy recruiting Clyde they jumped in but we had him committed by then.
That would not happen today
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I want to see what type of class CKS brings in 2022. I think recruiting will pick up this Summer with Covid restrictions being lifted.
Believe me, I love the way CKS recruits but making it to a FF will pay dividends and cache among recruits.
Btw, Iâm not like some of you holding hope on Griggs. I think heâll go pro. I think he tip his hand when he wanted to move to play with Mikey Williams, another player most likely going pro right out of HS.
We do have a bunch of solid recruits. DJ and mark were both top 100 four star kids. Quinten was a mcd aa consensus five star. This team is littered with highly sought after kids. Maybe they arenât all 4 and 5 star recruits but outside of a couple of the bench players they were highly recruited extremely talented kids. With no offense to the teams of tester year this team is not being led by the Aubrey Colemanâs and fluff mccivers of the juco pool.
These are talented kids that are being coached up no doubt. But to think that there is this insane talent drop off and all of our kids did not know what a basketball was when they graduated high school is silly. The kids we got coming in next year are pretty darn good as well.
We can honestly say we are recruiting for itâs the top 10-20 percent of all teams. In football these would be top 25 classes.
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Facts. Even Roberts & Robbie were/are solid 3 star 
players. Theyâre probably our lowest rated guys on the roster.
Wonder if their is a site that rates the final four teams by their roster.
Would be interesting who has the most 4 and 5 star players.
Baylor, Gonzaga, ?
UCLA has around 9
Gonzaga has around 9
Baylor has around 8
UH has around 4
1- gonzaga
2- ucla
3- baylor
big gap
4- houston
Yeah itâs likely Dream would never have set foot on campus at UH or any school for that matter. He would have went straight to the NBA through its NBA Africa program.
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