2017 Recruiting

Dean Murdoch wrote:

@EvanDaniels wrote:Aussie forward Grant Anticevich just verbally committed to California, per sources. Had visited Georgia Tech & Davidson as well.

I guess this DoubleDipper guy knows what he's talking about!

Yeah, but pretty disappointing, IMO, that a Pac-12 caliber player was apparently turned away by the UP coaching staff....we just have to trust they have a "plan" for the future.

Tough time of year for recruiting updates, but as soon as the high school, JUCO, and college tournaments start finishing-up we'll see a lot of movement and information.

We already know UP will have at least 6 new players on the team next year (counting the Porter brothers), but the intriguing question is how many players will leave the team, and who will take their scholarships?  The only thing I'm sure of: We have yet to discover the names of all the new guys who could potentially join the Pilots this summer.

One name we do know, Kyvon Davenport, is starting to pick up a lot of interest from some of the bigger schools....the latest is an offer from Ole Miss.

I couldn't remember what the scholarship situation was for next year so I had a quick look today. Even in the most generous scenario - both Porters walk on - all 13 slots are filled for next year.

I suppose it's obvious then if the Pilots are offering players at multiple positions in the last week or so, then multiple players are going to be out the door at season's end. Probably something that we all could have guessed was coming, but recent recruiting activity would confirm.

Scholarship slots will open up.

Sure looks like Maker and Ferguson are on the way out. Maybe Hartwich as well?

bobtcat2 wrote: Maybe Hartwich as well?

Because of the dominant shot blocking bigs we have coming in?

bobtcat2 wrote:Sure looks like Maker and Ferguson are on the way out.  Maybe Hartwich as well?

If you have some have some actual knowledge of this or some inside information, (wire tapping?), please share it with us.....

I'm sure the players who read this forum would like to know more....

Players who read the forum might also be interested in this,

"Yes, I think there will be some changes made, but players will NOT be "run off"....instead they will offered and afforded the opportunity to graduate from UP....it will be the player's decision to stay or go."

And this,

wrv wrote:
The U is committed to Ferguson for four years despite the late signing? He could not have signed an NLI, but a financial grant in aid of sorts. It likely makes no difference, and I assume he is returning.

"I would not assume that...”

And to be fair, this too from Dean Murdoch:

"I suppose it's obvious then if the Pilots are offering players at multiple positions in the last week or so, then multiple players are going to be out the door at season's end. Probably something that we all could have guessed was coming, but recent recruiting activity would confirm.”

And, you already knew that,

"Scholarship slots will open up."

I would be surprised and disappointed if Hartwich left, but I confess to no inside knowledge whatsoever. Obviously, Bobcat2, you are not alone in your speculation. I do not think it unreasonable under the circumstances.

Dean Murdoch wrote:On the radio broadcast following the LMU game, Coach Cantu said they were close to picking up a couple of commits from some "impact players" - didn't go into too much more detail, but I'm counting 13 scholarships committed for next season even if both Porters are counted as walk-ons.

Considering Monson has only played 15 minutes this season I guess he'd be the most likely possibility to transfer out and free up a scholarship, so there's one...so I guess either the staff expects someone else to transfer, or one/both of these new guys are coming as walk-ons.

If the Pilots had secured commitments as suggested by coach Cantu, I assume we would know.

Updates?

Two guys below with whom Portland was rumored to be interested at one point.But I am not sure that with the Porter's coming aboard if we remain interested. Too bad about Anticevich--can't stress enough the challenges of a lack of competitive talent.

These quotes are stolen from the Montana State board, with minor editing. Portland may have long since moved on, but Rivals lists both, although it is usually out of date.

Jack Hutchison 6-1 PG Maple Grove HS in Maple Grove MN. I Believe Hutchinson has taken at least one unofficial visit to Montana State last summer and I have been told he also has made it up for at least one game last year. He is originally from Arizona where his dad played for Lute Olson. Montana State, Wofford and Sam Houston have offered and considered the leaders. I believe he has unofficially visited all three. Cal Poly Lafayette, Lehigh Peperdine, Portland, Elon and Yale are also involved. Hutchinson stock has dropped a little as of late. Last year he averaged 10.6 points a game and 2 assists, for a team that was ranked #2 in the state all year. His team features 6-3 Brad Davison ranked the # 8th prospect in Minnesota, and is getting looks from Big 10, Pac-12 and Ivy League schools. Another Teammate is 6-4 wing Tywhon Pickford (#13 prospect in MN) is also getting a lot of d-1 interest. He shot 39% from three point range last year.

Kyle Small 5-6 PG Mayfiar HS Lakewood CA No that is not a misprint he is 5-6 (sometimes listed at 5-5) and his last name is Small. As a junior this past year he averaged 15 points 6 assists 3 rebounds 2 steals for Mayfield despite is size. This is an interesting prospect and story. MSU coach started recruiting Small while he was at Oregon and recruited his brother, Kendal Small, to Oregon just before leaving to become Montana State's head coach. Montana State was the first school to offer him. Shortly thereafter Portland got involved and eventually offered him his second scholarship tender. the coach at Portland that recruited him assistant Eric Jackson. Jackson was let go from Portland this past spring when they fired its head coach. A couple months later Jackson found another coaching position with .......... Montana State. For a long time it was only MOntana State and Portland associated with his recruitment. Other schools who have offered are Montana, Santa Clara, Utah Valley and Utah State. Tulsa, Utep, Hofstra and Northern Arizona have been showing a lot of interest as of late. Here is an eval from ESPN

ESPN Analyst
Updated 06/16/2015
Strengths:
Small is a lightening quick point guard who possesses superior speed with the dribble. He is a blur in the open court and he has the bounce to finish through traffic in a variety of ways. He is a gifted passer and his vision is high-level. He gets great lift on his jump shot and his range extends to 20-feet. Overall, he is one of the more competitive guards in the class.

Weaknesses:
Small is undersized and he'll need to get stronger to not get over-powered by bigger guards. He needs to continue to work on his point guard savvy (passing under pressure) as well as changing speeds to keep defenders off balance.

2017-18 PROJECTED ROSTER
Scholarship players in regular font
Presumed walk-ons in italics
Reported active recruits in (parentheses)

PG: Johnson, Hallinan, Ferguson, Walker, (Cockfield)
SG: Tyson, Jackson, F. Porter, Monson, M. Porter
SF: Maker, Fahrensohn, (Artest III)
PF: Taylor, Stone, (Davenport), Diabate
C: Hartwich, Smoyer

There are 13 scholarships already spoken for, along with 3 walk-ons. Taking on any more scholarship players can only happen, per DD, if current scholarship players voluntarily leave the team. The reported scholarship offers that are on the table are therefore conditional offers, pending the availability of scholarships.

I take the coaching staff's recent use of resources and time to recruit and extend these conditional offers as evidence that some number of current scholarship players have already decided to leave. I strongly hope that DD's characterization of the situation is accurate, and that no player feels any pressure from the coaches or the university to forego his scholarship and leave the team. I would rather root for a program that fully honors its commitments to student-athletes, even if that means it does not win as many games.

I would view any attempt by the adults to pressure/encourage players to leave, or even insinuate that the coaches would prefer for them to leave, as a failure to fully honor the commitments made when those players were recruited. Certainly the coaches should provide full and transparent information to each player about their projected role on the team in the coming year(s), which the players can then use to decide whether or not to remain with the team. But each player should also be encouraged to work hard and improve during the off-season, with full support and investment from the coaches and training staff, in hopes that they could then take on a larger role than the coaches currently envision.

Excellent comments, NPN.  Thank you for putting into words what so many of us are thinking!

Regarding your players by positions matrix: I think everyone learned this season that Jazz is a much better SG than PG, as having him at the SG allows him to create and score.  Probably don't need to change his position on your matrix, but unless UP cannot sign another PG in addition to JoJo, I don't think we'll see him playing there except in an emergency.

Additional still viable recruits that are listed in this thread are:
Makol Mawien - PF - RS FR at New Mexico JC
Iziah James - PG - Class of 2017 in Virginia

With the coaches on the road recruiting through March 29, I think we'll see quite a few names pop up as potential Pilots for 2017, 2018, and 2019.

DoubleDipper wrote:I'm sure the players who read this forum would like to know more....

I'm not sure how much they take seriously what is written on PilotNation, but it was three players sitting around in the Pilot House before the season started that introduced me to this forum.

I know Andre saw the post about him from bobcat2....

Players read it, parents read it, administrators read it. Opposing fans read it, gamblers read it. As much as we think it just a few folks sitting around speculating among ourselves, it is not. Carry on accordingly.

up7587 wrote:Players read it, parents read it, administrators read it.  Opposing fans read it, gamblers read it.  As much as we think it just a few folks sitting around speculating among ourselves, it is not.  Carry on accordingly.

But, of course, the speculation on this board had long since occurred before our friend bobcat posted, including about the specific player cited, so I am not sure why that player would be upset by the repitition of what had already been posted, nor is bobcat's transgression, if one, any different than all the other posters who proceeded bobcat with the same or similar notions.

I wish well to all players, but their personal circumstances are hardly dependent on what is posted here. I trust their integrity and fortitude and that of their family will withstand posts here. But ultimately I agree that speculation on the point should cease.

Don't misunderstand. Speculation should continue. Just know who is reading us.

If I were Ferguson/Monson and playing behind a walk on I'd transfer if I could get a scholarship at another academically good school where I could get/the coach is willing to give me playing time. Otherwise, what's the advantage to a player in transferring? Transferring to a lesser school or a school in a Division without full ride scholarships seems like it would be a poor decision life wise. Unless of course you think you can get enough playing time to go play overseas for a while you've got to consider how you're going to make money after school (and a UP degree is not too shabby) and also consider that going somewhere without a full ride is going to cost you $$$$ right now. I mean getting paid $40k+(scholarship value) to ride the pine isn't so bad when you're that age. I realize it's not likely to be $40k+ in reality as there would probably be some other partial scholarship (academic, need, etc.) for most folks if they weren't playing basketball, but it's still a pretty significant amount.

DoubleDipper wrote:Regarding your players by positions matrix: I think everyone learned this season that Jazz is a much better SG than PG, as having him at the SG allows him to create and score.  Probably don't need to change his position on your matrix, but unless UP cannot sign another PG in addition to JoJo, I don't think we'll see him playing there except in an emergency.

I certainly appreciate this point, DD. However, I wonder if Jazz could in fact be a highly effective point guard on a team with other consistent offensive weapons. Alec's effectiveness was bolstered at various times in his Pilots' career by having legitimate scorers to compliment him (Bailey, van der Mars, Pressley, Jazz).

Once Alec was out for the season, Jazz didn't have any other scorers on the floor and was hung out to dry. I'd love to see Jazz running an offense that includes at least two other legitimate, consistent scoring threats. Perhaps that will happen next season?

Or, if Walker comes in ready to play, we could see Jazz back at the SG spot, stuffing the stat sheet.

I also hope that the coaches give Hallinan a real chance to compete for major playing time at PG next year. He looked like he belonged when he got his opportunities this season.

Probably no surprise to many, but it has been reported by a reliable source that Xavier, Andre, Chier, and Alec M. will be transferring....opening up 3 scholarships (assuming Malcolm and Franklin Porter walk-on next season).

Apparently this has been in the works for awhile, and each has been getting help from the staff to find a suitable next school, but I do not know if any of the four have found confirmed landing spots.

This news is also being reported by Verbal Commits:
http://www.verbalcommits.com/schools/portland

I hate to see the guys go, but like any young player, they are looking for more playing time....

DoubleDipper wrote:Xavier, Andre, Chier, and Alec M.

Xavier: NOOOOOOO NOT XAVIER I understand his lack of playing time which could've gone the way of Alec M had Alec W not go down, but given his implied financial situation in the recent Beacon article...I really hope he lands a good spot somewhere. It felt like he was going to stay, and I thought he and Jazz were going to be the star duo next season. Gonna miss him the most.

Andre: I feel kinda bad for him because I think the Wintering injury and him suddenly being thrust in as the replacement put too much weight and pressure on him only as a freshman.

Chier: Not sure how to feel. Looked promising then just suddenly stopped appearing in games.

Alec M: Not really surprised, hardly saw any action from him.

I know it's only been a few days since the final game, but next season is turning out to be...interesting, to say the least.

Verbal Commits was quick to report on this. That alone is interesting for those of us who are not a "reliable source" about Pilot fortunes. Good luck to the departing young men. Assume that the news suggests the other players are likely staying.

Regardless, glad that Jackson, Smoyer and Johnson in particular are not among those reported as leaving. From what I saw of Smoyer, he can play, has some skills: bigs like him have proven hard to come by here.

The Pilots will benefit from the return of the remaining junior class, Hartwich, Taylor and Tyson--hope Tyson has a better senior year, returns as a more consistent shooter, akin to his sophomore year. Hartwich is getting better each year. Taylor is a pillar.

Playing time had to be a large consideration for the transfers. From what we know of the players signed, they were likely to eat up minutes, whether or not the transfers stayed.

The underlying assumption of much of the posts about transferring is the correlation between talent and winning. Have we expected wins despite frequent recruiting failures? According to the loose star rating applied to recruits by Verbal Commits we have the lowest recruiting ranking in the conference and, obviously, have been near the bottom of the league for a while.

Do we have a staff in place that can upgrade the talent without sacrificing standards? I think so.

The Terry Porter era continues with much on the line for the program. Maybe we can avoid D2.

wrv wrote:Verbal Commits was quick to report on this.

Extremely quick, and with no source listed. A pretty trusty source must have tipped them off!

I wasn't sure what would happen with Hallinan after his breakout last couple of weeks here. There will be Division II teams falling all over themselves to get this kid on their roster. Really was a nice story for the Pilots in an otherwise dismal year.

Lots of parallels to the first year of the previous coaching staff. Reveno's Pilots lost Brian McTear at Christmas, and then Jamie Jones and Parker Emerson after the season. 10 years ago, damn.

Dean Murdoch wrote:I wasn't sure what would happen with Hallinan after his breakout last couple of weeks here. There will be Division II teams falling all over themselves to get this kid on their roster. Really was a nice story for the Pilots in an otherwise dismal year.

That's the hope, D2 scholarship offers.

X is in a unique situation because he's not on a scholarship, and his coaches and teammates love him for among other attributes, his enthusiasm and ability to make everyone on the team better while becoming a better player himself. He's been playing on the Chiles Center court since he was just a little kid, so he really has more invested in being a Pilot than anyone else associated with the team.

Xavier is a walk-on at a university where room and board is close to $59,000 per year.  Because his wonderful mom is a UP employee, X's tuition is paid for....and that amounts to just a little over $40,000.  If UP brings in another PG or two to play with JoJo (or as NPN suggests, Jazz goes back to being a PG), then Xavier will move on because at this point he wants playing time.  But if there are no full-ride D2 offers, we could still see Xavier on the Bluff next season....where everyone will welcome his return.

Because he's a friend, I hope he goes to another school, takes a redshirt year, and has a fantastic career as a starter!

StudentPilot wrote:

Dean Murdoch wrote:I wasn't sure what would happen with Hallinan after his breakout last couple of weeks here. There will be Division II teams falling all over themselves to get this kid on their roster. Really was a nice story for the Pilots in an otherwise dismal year.

That's the hope, D2 scholarship offers.

X is in a unique situation because he's not on a scholarship, and his coaches and teammates love him for among other attributes, his enthusiasm and ability to make everyone on the team better while becoming a better player himself. He's been playing on the Chiles Center court since he was just a little kid, so he really has more invested in being a Pilot than anyone else associated with the team.

Xavier is a walk-on at a university where room and board is close to $59,000 per year.  Because his wonderful mom is a UP employee, X's tuition is paid for....and that amounts to just a little over $40,000.  If UP brings in another PG or two to play with JoJo (or as NPN suggests, Jazz goes back to being a PG), then Xavier will move on because at this point he wants playing time.  But if there are no full-ride D2 offers, we could still see Xavier on the Bluff next season....where everyone will welcome his return.

Because he's a friend, I hope he goes to another school, takes a redshirt year, and has a fantastic career as a starter!

I think it all depends on what's most important to X. He's not going to be able to beat the education he's getting at UP and that may weigh heavily. It certainly doesn't have to cost $40,000 a year to live off campus. Certainly if he wants to play somewhere else, he'll have plenty of offers. Frankly I hope he stays. It's nice to have a guy on the bench who can play if need be. You never know when injuries might happen like they did this year.

Not sure, but I think Xavier (or his mom) pays about $17,000 per year to live and eat on campus....give or take, plus a guy's got expenses!

A relative of the Casper College point guard, who was also a teammate of Xavier Hallinan at Central Catholic, tells me SF 6-7/210 (same size as Chier Maker) Josh McSwiggan, is being recruited by UP, and that Josh was in Portland in mid-December during winter break to watch the Pilots play South Dakota and OSU at the Rose Garden on an unofficial visit.

Josh McSwiggan, from England, redshirted last year at UTEP when Coach Cantu was there.  Denied a year of eligibility by the NCAA due to a lack of high school credits (knowing the British system, that sounds incredibly wrong to me), he transferred to Casper College where he plays alongside former UP PF, Colin Russell.

Wherever Josh plays D1 ball, he’ll apparently have only 2 years of eligibility, but according to a statement I saw from UTEP Coach Floyd, he could still petition the NCAA for a third year if he accumulates enough college credits before his senior year.

Oh, and I was also told by someone else that McSwiggan’s high school girl friend, who is now a sophomore on Casper’s women’s team, is hoping to transfer to Concordia-Portland to play for former UP assistant, Sean Kelly.