Reclassing up; a mistake – DJ Burns

Posted on April 7, 2024 by MichaelAndersonStone

I’ve been saying for a long time that there’s no hurry to get to college and graduating early is a bad decision. Here’s the latest example supporting that. DJ Burns. He went to Tennessee early. He didn’t survive and was gone in a year because, by his parents’ admission, he wasn’t ready to handle college. He then transferred home to a smaller school.

Burns had taken enough classes to graduate from high school a year early. His family formulated a plan with Tennessee and decided Burns could handle the academic rigor a year ahead of schedule. And he did. It was the lifestyle he wasn’t ready for.

“Maturity-wise, he was not ready,” Takela said. “He needed to be back home to grow and mature. After you go to the University of Tennessee as one of their star athletes, whether you redshirt, you got access to everything and every party. He had fun.”

Washington Post April 5th 2024 Adam Kilgore

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/04/05/dj-burns-nc-state/

Email of the Day: Changing Schools Too Many Times

Posted on March 14, 2024 by MichaelAndersonStone

These emails are part of an exchange between me and a parent who contacted me looking for advice on having his child change prep schools. This same parent opted not to hire me a year ago when the child last switched schools. This is the child’s third school in four years (one public, one parochial, one prep – he reclassed) and they want to switch to a fourth school for his final year. His younger brother also currently attends the same school and they would like the two to stay together.

Kyle,
I tend to look at a much bigger picture than most families and others involved in the process. In your case, I think Michael should stay at his current prep school. After 3 schools in 4 years, it’s pretty clear the problem isn’t the schools, it’s Michael, you and his mom. You are the common denominator. If your goal is to best position yourselves for the future, the best thing you can do right now is to stick it out for once. That will start to try to reverse the bad foundation you’ve laid and the bad habit you’re all in of picking the wrong school and/or leaving when things get tough. (As it stands now, you’re likely to keep doing the same thing when he gets to college.) I think the best plan for everyone is to stay where he is and hire me now to help you with the college process. That’s the big picture.

If you want to just look at the smaller picture and decide you definitely want to change schools, I have a couple that I think are exactly what you’re looking for. I said yesterday that you can’t afford to make another mistake, but there’s another way to look at it that’s probably more accurate or at least more realistic. At this point, from a basketball standpoint, you have nothing to lose. You know you’re not going to get the basketball you want at his current school next year and you’ve already been to 3 schools so one more isn’t going to make much of a difference. If you want to, you can definitely put him in a better overall basketball situation for his last year. This will put him in the best position to be recruited and ready to play at the college level.

I know that ideally, Sam would move to the same school as Michael. The schools I have in mind would also be a good match for Sam and have room for him.

Mike

Dad’s response:

Mike,

I appreciate you keeping it real. Kris and I both deep down felt the right move is to stick it out at his current school. Michael loves the school, academics are great, etc.

Kris and I plan to have a call with his AD and coach and express our concerns, give them a chance. You are right, Michael needs to stick it out and us supporting his habit of when it gets tough roll out needs to stop.

Quote of the Day: Money Over Fit

Posted on November 17, 2020 by MichaelAndersonStone

Too many golfers, especially girls, are choosing full rides over schools that offer partial scholarships but are a better fit. It’s a big part of why we’re seeing so many transfers recently.

This came out in a recent conversation I had with a Big XII women’s golf coach talking about how families are deciding which college to choose. It’s indicative of two things. One, the financial pressure families are feeling to pay for college. Two, most families don’t know how to make a good college choice.

Videos – One Critique

Posted on February 3, 2017 by MichaelAndersonStone

One of the most effective ways we all learn is by watching others and their mistakes.

Here’s an email I wrote recently to a high school senior. Overall, he’s a solid, likable kid from a good family. Like a lot of kids (and families), in this case he’s beating himself. The recruiting process is tough enough without beating yourself. Much of it is out of your control. Take care of those things that you can control. This email is packed with important concepts that every family can benefit from.

Kenny,

You’re worried about getting a D1 offer and frustrated by things currently out of your control, but you’re not doing what you need to do to help yourself. I emailed you a couple weeks ago about fixing your HUDL page, but nothing’s changed. If you’re lucky enough to get a scholarship coach to visit your page, they are going to leave before they ever see what you want them to see. It’s a disorganized mess. When you make coaches go looking for what they want, when you make it hard on them, they just leave and go looking at videos of other kids. It needs to have some order and simplicity. Right now it’s just what I call a vanity page. It’s designed for you, your family and friends. If you do get serious about prep school, this page as it currently stands is making it harder for us to find one. Prep school coaches have all the same problems with it that the college coaches have with it. They need to see certain things and they’re not there.

You must have a highlight video from THIS year available and at the top of the page. At the very least you need to pin last year’s highlight video to the top instead of the video that’s there now. The problem with last year’s is when coaches see only last year’s video, they think you’re hiding something about this year, something you don’t want them to see. That makes them nervous. That’s a problem for you. You also need to get rid of some of the other short videos. They’re adding nothing but confusion.

Finally, the 4.5 40 time is still listed in the left hand column. We talked about that before and you told me you didn’t know how it got there. You need to delete that. It’s false advertising.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks.

Mike

Michael A. Stone

Prep School Sports Connection

Matching Athletes With Prep Schools

Phone: +1 (585) 348-7180

Skype: prepschoolsportsconnection

facebook: prepschoolsportsconnection

LinkedIn: prepschoolsportsconnection

mike@prepschoolsportsconnection.com

www.prepschoolsportsconnection.com

Stat of the Day: Women’s Basketball Transfers

Posted on January 29, 2017 by MichaelAndersonStone

The transfer rate for women’s D1 basketball is up 33% over a ten year period.

In 2003 the rate was 6.8%. In 2013 it was 9.2%. Those numbers are still about 1/4 of the men’s numbers. As with many other parts of the game, the women’s game seems to be following the men’s.

Perhaps most interesting is that 6 of the top 10 rated girls in the 2013 recruiting class have transferred. A number of those 6 committed to colleges as sophomores (also similar to the boys) and some say they now realize that what they considered a dream school as high school sophomores is much different than where they want to be playing as 20 year olds. This is a pretty strong case that kids (and parents) are picking a college at too young an age.

Overwhelmed by the Recruiting Process? Put Education First.

Posted on September 16, 2016 by MichaelAndersonStone

I returned recently from a major east coast summer basketball camp where I had a lengthy discussion about the recruiting process with the mother of a talented junior. Her son is a good student who already holds offers from D1 schools, none of them big-time. A single mom with two kids who never went to college and never played sports, she told me she has little awareness of colleges or basketball programs. Working two jobs (they are a low income family) leaves her precious little time to deal with the recruiting process. I told her I’d had a conversation at the camp with a coach who said she was not returning his calls. She acknowledged that was a problem and said she feels overwhelmed by all the attention. “There are so many schools”, she said, “how do I handle this”?

The answer is simple, although a surprisingly large number of families never figure it out. Start with the schools offering the most highly rated educations. (See separate blog showing list). This quickly shrinks the list while having the added benefit of keeping priorities straight, often next to impossible in this process, even for those who are good at it. Focusing on the top-rated academic schools cuts the number of possible schools from approximately 265 (outside the big-time basketball conferences) to about 45, while maintaining priorities. For most, only about half of those 45 will actually show recruiting interest. Now the list is manageable and efficient, goals are intact and focus is tight. The chance of success has increased greatly.

Quote of the Day – Steve Kerr on AAU Problems

Posted on June 6, 2016 by MichaelAndersonStone

Even if today’s players are incredibly gifted, they grow up in a basketball environment that can only be called counterproductive. AAU basketball has replaced high school ball as the dominant form of development in the teen years. I coached my son’s AAU team for three years; it’s a genuinely weird subculture. Like everywhere else, you have good coaches and bad coaches, or strong programs and weak ones, but what troubled me was how much winning is devalued in the AAU structure. Teams play game after game after game, sometimes winning or losing four times in one day. Very rarely do teams ever hold a practice. Some programs fly in top players from out of state for a single weekend to join their team. Certain players play for one team in the morning and another one in the afternoon. If mom and dad aren’t happy with their son’s playing time, they switch club teams and stick him on a different one the following week. The process of growing as a team basketball player — learning how to become part of a whole, how to fit into something bigger than oneself — becomes completely lost within the AAU fabric.

– Steve Kerr, Head Coach, Golden State Warriors

Ivy League Men’s Basketball, not that Athletic? Not True.

Posted on February 17, 2016 by MichaelAndersonStone

There’s a perception that Ivy League men’s basketball players, while talented, are on the low end of the athleticism scale among D1 basketball players. It’s often said that prospects with marginal D1 athletic ability “might be able to play at the Ivy level”. There’s also the old inference that non-scholarship schools can’t reasonably expect to recruit the same level of talent as scholarship schools, so they have to settle for less athletic kids.

Here are eight recent examples, including six from this year, that will probably surprise most people. All eight players started and/or contributed significantly at schools and in leagues most perceive to have more athletic players and higher levels of ball. Seven of the eight are graduate transfers, having used up their Ivy academic eligibility before their athletic eligibility (the Ivys don’t allow redshirting). They opted to transfer in order to play their final year instead of doing what some, including Columbia’s all-Ivy selection Alex Rosenberg, have done and withdraw from school for a year.

Cancer, Galal. Cornell / Kent State University. 6’2″, 185 lbs. Graduate Student. Cancer played in every game, averaging 25 minutes per game for a 19-13 Mid-American Conference team. He was not an all-Ivy selection, although some of his teammates were.

Cressler, Nolan. Cornell / Vanderbilt. 6’4″, 210 lbs. Redshirt Junior. Vanderbilt is a member of the SEC, where Cressler plays regularly against teams like Kentucky, Florida, LSU etc. He’s the 7th man, playing 14 minutes/game on a team that made the NCAA tournament. At Cornell, he played two years and was honorable mention all-Ivy after averaging 17 pts, 4 rebounds and 2 assists his sophomore year.

Koon, Denton. Princeton / Hofstra University. 6’8″, 210 lbs. Graduate student. Koon has started every game for Hofstra, averaging 35 minutes per game along with 12 points and 7 rebounds for a team that’s 18-8 overall and second in the Colonial Athletic Association. He did not make any all-Ivy teams last year, although two of his Princeton teammates did.

Maia, Rafael. Brown / University of Pittsburgh. 6’9″, 245 lbs. Graduate student. Pitt is in the ACC, by any accounting one of the top few leagues in the country. Maia has started 17 out of 25 games for an 18-7 ACC team that goes to the tournament almost every year. He was honorable mention all-Ivy 2015, while one of his Brown teammates was second team all-Ivy.

Miller, Shonn. Cornell / University of Connecticut. 6’7″, 220 lbs. Graduate student. UConn, formerly of the Big East and now in the AAC, has won 4 national championships in the last 18 years. Miller has started every game while leading the team in scoring and is second in rebounding. He was a 1st team all-Ivy selection.

Mitola, Alex. Dartmouth / George Washington University. 5’11”, 170 lbs. Graduate student. Alex plays about 15 minutes a game for one of the top teams in the Atlantic-10, a conference that regularly puts 3-4 teams in the NCAA tournament. At one point this year GW was ranked in the Top 25. A second team all-Ivy pick, as was one of his teammates, Alex was known as athletically limited by Ivy standards, yet here he is, a key part of a very good team in a very athletic league.

Peck, Errick. Cornell / Purdue University. 6’6″, 225 lbs. Graduate student, 2013-2014. Peck played 19 minutes per game for Purdue, a team that plays in the Big 10, a league that has seven teams in the NCAA tournament this year. He was an honorable mention all-Ivy selection as a Cornell senior, averaging 10 pts., 5 rebs and 2 assists, while starting 11 out of 29 games.

Tarwater, Dwight. Cornell / University of California at Berkeley. 6’6″, 230 lbs. Graduate student, 2014-2015. Cal plays in the PAC-12, a league that just put seven teams in the NCAA tournament, tying it for most of any conference this year. Tarwater played in all 33 games for Cal, starting 13. At Cornell, he was not a starter until his senior year, on what were some deep and talented teams. Yet they never finished above .500 in the league, or even close to it overall. He was never an all-Ivy selection at Cornell, although some of his teammates were.

The major roles being played on successful teams by all of these former Ivy athletes eliminates any possible arguments that they are just sitting on the bench on more athletic teams or getting playing time for really bad teams. Size and/or position can also be eliminated as factors, as these players cover the range of size (5’11” to 6’9″) and position (guard to center). Finally, if measured by all-Ivy honors, only 1-2 of these eight were even the best players on their own Ivy League team. Clearly, athleticism in Ivy League men’s basketball is much better than many give it credit for.

Aside from proving the perception of low Ivy League athleticism is false, these examples also raise an interesting question. Is the league hurting itself by forcing nearly all of these players to leave when they still have NCAA eligibility? On the surface, certainly. Is the rule obsolete? Maybe. Would they have left anyway? Is this year is an anomaly? Perhaps. But in this country where we’ve completely lost our perspective when it comes to sports, there’s plenty to be said for the dog still wagging the tail in the Ivys, and not the other way around, as at most schools. On the other hand, even the Ivys have adjusted with the times every once in a while. Their recent addition of a post season tournament is a good example.

Finally, as five of the eight are from Cornell alone, you’ve got to feel for recently fired Cornell coach Bill Courtney, who must have felt like the basketball gods were not on his side. Who could blame him if he occasionally wondered what might have been.

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