Davis Inks with Seton Hall

Basketball Recruiting General NCS Basketball47

He finally got his wish.

After some bumpy roads, former NC State recruit and signee Larry Davis has signed with Bobby Gonzalez’s Seton Hall Pirates.

For a little bit of fun, we thought that we would highlight this blog entry that discusses provision #19 in the National Letter of Intent that high school recruits, including Larry Davis, sign.

19. If Coach Leaves. I understand I have signed this NLI with the institution and not for a particular sport or individual. If the coach leaves the institution or the sports program, I remain bound by the provisions of this NLI. I understand it is not uncommon for a coach to leave his or her coaching position.

The ACC Area Sports Journal detailed some of Davis’ ‘recruitment’ from Bobby Gonzalez. Mr O summarized it as follows:

The ACC Sports Journal explained the potential tampering involved with Seton Hall and Davis. Gonzalez delayed hiring his coaching staff even though it was well known who he was going to hire so that these guys could make contact with recruits during a quiet/dead period. One of the guys on his staff is a NYC AAU guy that is close to Davis. If Gonzalez had hired him officially right away, then this AAU guy would have had to follow NCAA regulations and he could have had no contact with Davis. Instead, Gonzalez waited or hasn’t even announced his staff yet.

Even Greg Dickhead referenced the situation; We refer you to this entry for the following on how Bobby Gonzalez recruits:

3. Seton Hall’s ruse: The worst secret in college basketball is that new Seton Hall coach Bobby Gonzalez will complete his staff with former St. John’s assistant Dermon Player. Why hasn’t Gonzalez gone ahead and hired Player? Because he needs Player to stay with his AAU program, the Metro Hawks, as long as possible. Some of the best players in the area are playing for the Hawks, which means unlimited access for a future Seton Hall assistant. Is this legal? Sure it is. Should it be legal? Of course not.

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Basketball Recruiting General NCS Basketball

47 Responses to Davis Inks with Seton Hall

  1. redfred2 07/13/2006 at 12:38 AM #

    This stuff burns me up. All the people who said we had “no right” to hold Davis or any of the other the recruits accountable are absolutely looney. That we weren’t justified and would create malcontents. Sendek produced malcontents, NC State did not. Sidney Lowe will not, but these kids will never get a chance to figure it out. These bogus recruits who were sold solely on a coach and solely by the coach, and were just another fruitless waste of NCSU’s time and money.

    I am going to say it one more time, if Herb Sendek had been placing any value on NC State University while he speaking to these young men, selling it as a great place to attend college as well as play basketball, instead of just promoting his own self and his own style of play, we wouldn’t be going through this right now.

    I know I watched him for ten years, even before things started going south, and I never got any sense that he loved NCSU or being in Raleigh. If anyone still thinks the former coach spoke highly of NCSU on the recruiting trail and promoted it’s worth to these kids, they need to get back in touch with reality.

    I love for him for to play for NCSU but if I were Lowe I wouldn’t put too much time in recruiting Chris Wright. Even beyond taking the coaching search into account there is something fundamentally wrong with the way these kids were recruited and their perceptions of NCSU.

  2. Mr O 07/13/2006 at 7:28 AM #

    The ACC Sports Journal explained the potential tampering involved with Seton Hall and Davis. Gonzalez delayed hiring his coaching staff even though it was well known who he was going to hire so that these guys could make contact with recruits during a quiet/dead period. One of the guys on his staff is a NYC AAU guy that is close to Davis. If Gonzalez had hired him officially right away, then this AAU guy would have had to follow NCAA regulations and he could have had no contact with Davis. Instead, Gonzalez waited or hasn’t even announced his staff yet.

  3. choppack1 07/13/2006 at 8:11 AM #

    Actually – I have to say, pretty smart on Gonzalez’s part. We’ll have to watch his actions in the future.

  4. RickJ 07/13/2006 at 8:23 AM #

    “My thing is I’m going to do what I have to do to get a kid, bottom line short of doing something illegal.” It sounds like Gonzalez believes in this quote from Lowe. He has immediately improved Seton Hall’s recruiting with Davis, excellent point guard Eugene Harvey and the transfer of big man Joey Cameron from Auburn. You don’t have to like the guy but give him credit – he has completely transformed the excitement level of Seton Hall basketball in the few months since his hiring.

  5. duckmanjw 07/13/2006 at 8:41 AM #

    This isn’t just happening at Seton Hall, its becoming a trend in college basketball as a whole.

    Pitt has recently or is hiring the AAU coach from DC who happens to have inside connections to Chris Wright as well as Anthony McClain.

    If I remember correctly Herb did it here, but the recruits never panned out. He has already done it at ASU to push for James Harden and he just got Harden’s teammate from CA to back out of his commit to USC.

    With the AAU and prep school circuit, along with the shoe camps playing major roles in recruiting, this will continue until the NCAA sees fit to install some type of rule that doesn’t allow contact between former coaches and players for a specified time. Because in a lot of case, these kids are only prepping 1-2 years max with a given team to hype their talents into D1 scholarships, putting a rule in place with like a 1 year silence period could be effective.

  6. Mr O 07/13/2006 at 8:57 AM #

    Choppack: Didn’t Amato delay the hiring of an assistant as well a few years ago?

    I think he delayed the hiring of Stroud when he was the S & C coach so that he could work with the kids more over the summer prior to be promoted in the fall.

  7. BladenWolf 07/13/2006 at 9:04 AM #

    There have always been ways to circumvent the process and to gain an advantage. Most coaches would do what Gonzales did.

    duckmanjw is right in that the various b-ball camps have grown to where they hold an enormous amount of power regarding who gets D1 schollys. And the camp coaches also parlay that into a step up to the big leagues by riding the coat tails of a 5-star recruit into the college coaching ranks.

    But I don’t see why Lowe would summarily dismiss courting Chris Wright becuuse of what happened with Davis and Seton Hell.

  8. Joeboot 07/13/2006 at 9:12 AM #

    I hope that Coach Lowe continues to recruit Chris Wright very agressively. Chris never signed an LOI (like Davis and Werner) so all he did was say that he was once again open to recruitment. I think this was only prudent for him. I realize that he did verbal to NC State, but when the situation changed he acted in his best interests. I have heard that he plans to make a visit to Raleigh to get to know Sidney and the rest of the staff. I think he has acted very appropriately and I sincerely hope he ends up playing for State.

  9. BladenWolf 07/13/2006 at 9:14 AM #

    Amen brother Joe… amen. We absolutely need a good PG to start out on the right foot.

  10. vtpackfan 07/13/2006 at 9:22 AM #

    “He has immediately improved Seton Hall’s recruiting with Davis, excellent point guard Eugene Harvey and the transfer of big man Joey Cameron from Auburn”
    He (Gonzalez) is cunning and used this coach to get a leg up. He must really be confident in his own coaching skills because now that he has got off to such a fast start that is all he has left. Can he coach this team so that metro area players will want to come play for him at a tiny private institution that doesn’t even have a home court near campus or any students that could fill one. He used up his AAU asst. coach trick, or maybe he will keep a revolving door of them since the NCAA can’t make itself very useful in the matter.

  11. PBdafan 07/13/2006 at 9:31 AM #

    Why wasn’t Sidney Lowe, with his NBA coaching experience and connections, and his storied past with NC State not able to retain the guys who had already committed? That worries me. Hopefully he will have more success with Wright.

  12. vtpackfan 07/13/2006 at 9:37 AM #

    Furthermore, I am glad to see a final result of this. So much of the landscape of NC St basketball has changed since our late season ru against WF and Texas. Obviously Larry Davis was just one of the various componets in all the activity, so it is a topic worth revisting. Honestly I think this should/will be the end of this saga and we will go forth without further ado and never think twice about it. Only in Lee Fowler’s future memoir titled “Man of Leisure” will there be any mention of what really happened with Davis (and other LOI signees). IMO there is a dissconnect between how our AD took action on these issues leading up to and following the announcement of Herberts resignation. We, the “lunatic” fringe, as well as the members and followers of the institution that tese players signed these letters with were always on a “need to know” basis as far as Fowler was concerned. That is my explaination for this whole situation and everyone else involved was just trying to do what was best for themselves.

  13. Clarksa 07/13/2006 at 9:40 AM #

    Why? As this entry clearly states, Seton Hall was tampering with our recruit and Coach Lowe wasn’t able to have an equal opportunity to retain Davis.

  14. Rick 07/13/2006 at 9:58 AM #

    We should not have released Davis. Just becase something is legal does not mean it is right.

  15. Wolf-n-Atl 07/13/2006 at 9:58 AM #

    Why is it that if the Seton Hall coach wasn’t officially hired he could talk to recruits, but Lowe wasn’t officially hired until he got his degree and he couldn’t talk to recruits? Is there a double standard or did we hire him with a stipulation of his graduation?

  16. vtpackfan 07/13/2006 at 9:59 AM #

    Just because this entry clearly states it one way, with respect to its author, doesn’t mean that the man who handled the situation between coaches has stated it clearly at all. We heard “partial” release come from the AD’s office a long time ago and nothing since. The details that SH had contact with Davis may not have contributed to Lowes inability to have equal access. The devil is not in the details this time around.

  17. PackMan97 07/13/2006 at 9:59 AM #

    This sounds very similary to what Huggins did at KSU. Since he wasn’t a coach, he went around and recruited kids to play for him and broke a number of NCAA rules…but who cares since he wasnt’ a coach. He gets hired and can use the fruits of his labor to give KSU an instant top 10 recruiting class.

    The NCAA is rotten (and stupid) to the core to allow this kinda crap.

    Can we please move on from Sendek. He’s gone. Let it go.

  18. vtpackfan 07/13/2006 at 10:11 AM #

    “Can we please move on from Sendek. He’s gone. Let it go”
    Exactly. But it was the intent of the author to show that the LOI is not to a coach but an academic institution, and the perception that the coach comes first and formost is a prevailing trend that allows these kids to turn there back on black and white commitments. The sooner some of the recruits learn the principle behind documents they sign committing themselves to something the better. It will only catch up to them sooner or later.

  19. joe 07/13/2006 at 10:15 AM #

    Legally, the NCAA cannot control what coaches do before they are hired so it would be hard for them to put rules into effect that prohibits coaches from talking to players when they are not yet on a staff.

  20. Mike 07/13/2006 at 10:30 AM #

    PBdafan, with Lowe’s coaching experience, why couldn’t he keep the recruits? Simple.

    As stated by others, they were not coming to NC State. They were going to play for Herbert. Werner was the prototypical Sendek player and “fit the system”. There was a question whether he would fit into the new system, whether he was talentd enough to play or just sit the bench. Werner probably made a good decision. Davis? Well, there are so may factors involved, but from what I have heard, we are probably better off wihtout him. I dont consider either of these men as losses for the long term (short term we do need bodies). Wright is still in the mix, he simply stated the door is open again. Lowe has not lost any recruits – they simply chose to go elsewhere.

    Look at it this way. You have your date to the prom, the girl you wanted to take. All of a sudden, she says she has another commitment for that date, but she will fix you up with her cousin. You dont know her cousin, dont know anything about her, so you decide to ask the 2nd girl on your list to the prom. These guys simply chose the 2nd girl. Now give Sid a chance.

  21. Mike 07/13/2006 at 10:34 AM #

    And by the way, Horner is still coming, so Sid must still have some influence.

  22. gumbydammit 07/13/2006 at 10:36 AM #

    There is one way we cold have helped nip this underhanded (legal? maybe, but still underhanded) type of recruiting by SHU in the bud – we could have said, “Yeah, we’ll release Davis, but not to Seton Hall.” If all schools followed that type of approach, then this crap would die on the vine.

  23. packbackr04 07/13/2006 at 10:39 AM #

    exactly so why is it that Sid was not contacting the players before he was hired or was there something embedded in his nba contract that prohibited his speaking directly with the highschool talent

  24. joe 07/13/2006 at 10:54 AM #

    I’m not sure if this is the answer or not, but since Lowe attended NCSU he is automatically considered by the NCAA a representative of NCSU who cannot contact recruits without following NCAA rules.

    That rule applies to anyone who ever took one class at NCSU and your status is the same for your entire life.

  25. packbackr04 07/13/2006 at 11:45 AM #

    so if gonzales (or an asst) was going back to their respective alma mater, and had not been officially hired as a coach at said alma mater, they would not be able to contact recruits as the NCAA deems them as representatives of that school even prior to being hired as a coach??? it seems like that would make returning to your alma mater to coach an unattractive thing, seeing as how you could agree to go elsewhere, hold off on officially signing so that you can contact the kids, whereas if you go to your alma mater you are prohibited from contacting recruits.??!!?
    am i way off on this?
    it seems like they should make this rule uniform regardless of what school you coach for-
    btw- i am a long time reader first time poster, got hooked on SFN during the tumultuous coaching search and have never looked back, thanks guys

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