Greg Monroe, a 6-foot-10, 230-pound big man from Louisiana and the no.1 recruit in the Class of 2008, just verbally committed to Georgetown. Monroe had narrowed his list down to five schools-LSU, Georgetown, Duke, Texas, and UConn-and it appeared he was going to take official visits at all five schools before making his decision. But before making his official recruiting trip to Duke, Monroe verbally committed to Georgetown. How/why did this happen? How did Georgetown snag him?
He made his decision after attending Georgetown’s Midnight Madness.
What happened there?
Coach Thompson III got Patrick Ewing Jr. to teach Jerry Rice how to “crank dat soulja boy” in front of a packed stadium full of Georgetown students. Check it out for yourself:
Jerry Rice doing soulja boy? Are you kidding me? That was awesome. If I’m Greg Monroe I’d commit right then too.
And then the current Coach Thompson stood at center court, danced, and called his players out to center court to come get down with him:
That is why Greg Monroe committed, because Coach Thompson III knows hot to recruit today’s high school student. Can you imagine Coach K breaking it down at Center Court and getting Paulus and Scheyer to do some “Soulja boy?” If he did, and Duke had Midnight Madness, Greg Monroe just might be a Blue Devil right now.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
10 comments:
This is 100% true. The last time Duke had a midnight madness of any kind was 4 years ago, where it featured Luol Deng (that year's big recruit) getting his first alley-oop. I also think it featured a high school senior Shaun Livingston announcing his commitment to the Blue Devils, ironically enough.
If Duke wants to continue to compete in terms of recruiting the best talent every year, some sort of Midnight Madness has to occur.
--
Vivek,
Right on. If I'm a dynamite high schooler, I'd want to have fun and get down. Can't do much of that with Coach K and the hardcore discipline.
If he decided to go to Gtown based on some dance party (which now seems likely), he isn't Duke material anyways.
If Greg Monroe is not Duke material, then who wants Duke material. You go have fun with Paulus and McRoberts and Henderson's elbow! Duke program is on a major downward slope. Even Love wasnt interested. Georgetown develops high school nobodys into top 5 draft picks. It develops uncoordinated 7 footers who can barely run into future lottery picks. This is what Monroe sees. This is what all high school recruits are drooling over.
True. And we develop top 5 talent (Shavlik, Josh) into nobody's. We have a problem on our hands.
For what it's worth, Kevin Love was very interested. It is Duke who stopped recruiting him because of his overprotective/psycho father. Google Love's comments on the Duke recruitment - he expresses surprise that he isn't getting phone calls from the Duke staff all of a sudden.
We stopped recruiting Kevin Love?
What?
Are you kidding me?
I can't remember the last time Duke took a talented big man and helped him develop into a better player. Duke consistently plays people out of position and I honestly think players feel it ruins them. At Georgetown it's quite the opposite, just look at Jeff Green. He developed an outside game and was allowed, playing within their system, to elevate his game to the 5th pick in the draft. McRoberts at Duke has similar if not better talent than Green yet he never got a chance to develop and bolted.
Agreed, but in terms of big men what about Elton Brand and Carlos Boozer?
Georgetown is back. I'm a hardcore Duke fan but I have nothing but respect for the way John Thompson III runs his program. They've now had success in the tournament, done a great job developing talent, and are starting to recruit extremely well. They are going to do amazing things the next few years.
Sadly, I can't say the same about the trajectory of our program.
Post a Comment