PHILLY – At one point last week, Kentucky coach John Calipari walked in the main door of the gym at the Reebok All-American Camp just past where Villanova coach Jay Wright was holding a conversation.
“Hey, it’s the two coaches who might land Michael Gilchrist standing right next to each other,” a bystander observed.
Then a coach joked that maybe Calipari and Wright could share the 6-foot-7, 219-pound Gilchrist, with one coach taking him for the first half of the season and the other for the second.
That’s how talented 15-year-old Michael Gilchrist is.
The consensus top player in the nation in the Class of 2011 and the Gatorade New Jersey Player of the Year, many people consider him to be the best player in high school basketball right now. Period.
Cindy Richardson, Gilchrist’s mother, told a reporter that her son talks about Kentucky and Villanova all the time.
“Michael loves Villanova,” she told the Philly Inquirer. “It’s Kentucky, Villanova. Villanova, Kentucky.”
Gilchrist told a newspaper two years ago that he would go to Memphis when Calipari was the coach.
The other key factor is William Wesley, aka “Worldwide Wes,” who grew up across the street from Richardson in Camden, N.J., remains a close family friend and is also close to Calipari. Wesley is widely credited with helping Calipari land another former Camden native, guard Dajuan Wagner.
But Richardson says her son won’t automatically land at Kentucky.
“There are no dots,” she told SI.com in a great story by Seth Davis. “Wes’ relationship with John Calipari, that’s their relationship. Our relationship with coach Calipari is going to be the same relationship we want to extend to every other college coach. The difference is, coach Cal does his job. Coach Cal is actively recruiting Michael, but we want Michael to experience the same thing every other high school athlete has experienced. He has not decided on where he’s going to go.”
A slew of college coaches have reached out to Gilchrist since June when it was permitted by the NCAA, but at least some think it’s not even worthwhile.
“I should be fired if I waste one cent recruiting that kid,” one high-major coach told Gary Parrish of CBS Sports. “[Gilchrist] is going to play for [John Calipari]. It’s done. Trust me. He’s playing for Cal. If you recruit him, you’re wasting your time.”
Jay Wright, for one, doesn’t agree.
Too bad he can’t share the young man with Calipari.
Follow Adam Zagoria on Twitter.
(Photo courtesy SI.com)
This is a Memphis post El Stupido ….these same idiots were kissing Cal’s ass a month prior to this post ….try again
Oh wow, now you KNOW these polls are legit:
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/148637-new-uk-coach-calipari-cures-cancer-and-fixes-economy-during-press-conference/poll_results#poll
nope…
people knew he cheated!! it’s in the poll!!
Probably because he made Calipari look like a biddy ball coach when they met a few months back. Not a single player that would start at Memphis and Anderson blew them out.
OHHHH …so now polls on blogs are important when Cal doesn’t win the vote ….how hypocritical …. a poll showing Cal as the best coach is suspect …while this poll is right on ….LOL …see what I mean ? …Besides this is a Tenn site ….they hate Cal ……and btw …..no sanctions …no violations …ever ….. in 17 years …by the NCAA ….against Cal ….. none …zilch …nauta ….zip …. zero ….
Yup…
pasta, these polls are REALLY a way to find legitimate answers.
When you play against YMCA teams with a team of top 25 recruits it’s not that big an accomplishment.
Looks like I win again (Yawn)
Just playing by your rules, pasta
Damn, I’m good.
Yep. I have Firefox automatically translating pastaboy’s proclamations of victory into pictures of the Iraqi Information Minister.
It’s so easy to beat you at your own game…
Comment by pastaboy
2009-07-15 16:26:03
Yes ….. of course voting by fans is more important than randomly picked data* fed into a computer ……. and keep in mind the more you bozos trash a poll by fans the more you trash your own opinion in here ….as I explained to the Schmuckus ….this computer stuff is like the BCS poll …a frigging joke …give me the opinion of a fan voting anyday …or a sportswriter ..or a coach ( taking victory lap ) ……
[*Note "randomly picked data"= "To identify the country’s best college basketball coaches, we measured recruiting class rank, win-loss percentage, NCAA Tournament invites, Final Four trips and, the ultimate goal of every coach, a championship.” ]
hahaha
Once again Pasta with a person opinion that is completely incongruent with the facts of the matter.
Recruiting since 2005
Top 10 recruits:
Duke 3
Calipari 4
Top 25 recruits:
Duke 11
Calipari 4
Top 50 recruits
Duke 13
Calipari 6
Top 100 recruits
Duke 17
Calipari 14
Duke 05:
McRoberts #1
Paulus #13
Boeteng #39
Pocius #53
Boykin #60
Duke 06:
Henderson #10
LThomas #20
Zoubek #25
Scheyer #28
Duke 07:
Singler #5t
NSmith #19
TKing #24
Duke08:
Elliot Williams: #15
Czyz #66
Plumlee #81
Duke 09:
Kelly #14
Mason plumlee #18
Calipari 05:
Williams #27
CDR #41
Anderson #66
Calipari 06:
Kemp #41
Niles #72
Calipari 07
Rose #5t
Jeff Robinson #55
Calipari 08
Evans #2
Witherspoon #38
Garcia #54
Simpkins #78
Calipari 09:
Wall #2
Cousins #3
Bledsoe #52
The polls you are quoting are from blogs which predominantly support a specific team ….the fanhouse poll covers a cross section of basketball blogs and therefore a mix of fans …..therefore making it a legitimate poll and your examples …well …yet another feeble attempt to refute the great one ….. you see …..you are here to promote a specific team and bash its opponents ….while I’m here merely to promote truth, justice , and the American way .
I didn’t know Tom Izzo coached a ymca team ? …Although it looked like it when Cal had him down 30 at the half ……LOL
The sun shines on a dog’s ass every so often (of course you have to wonder if that’s true since you’ve yet to get any posterior sunshine).
Calipari @ Memphis (eliminating his first 2 years @ Memphis so Pasta quits crying):
29-26 (.527) vs RPI Top 40
36-23 (.610) vs BCS Schools
Eliminate the statistical outlier (2008- the fluke year) and you get
20-24 vs RPI Top 40
26-21 vs BCS Schools.
Exactly the point you noodle eating fool! How do we know that 1/2 of those people polled were not from Kentucky? Were you there watching them noodle nuts? Of course not, there is no way to use a poll without knowing anything about the poll as a stated conclusion!
Corky from Wonder Years is embarassed for you you give people with special needs a bad name!
Why would Ky . fans tout Cal as the best coach ? …You morons have been posting for months that they are leary of him …..ouch ….caught in your own bullshit agian
These stats have been proven meaningless …because as a mid major team ….Cal has tried to load his schedule with top teams in the non conference to impress recruits …. he’s playing RPI 1 thru 25 predominantly as opposed to Bcs teams who catch a lot of easy games within conference play of 35 to 50 RPI ….its a skewed stat …next lying biased pathetic piece of un-educated dogshit nurse .
Once again Pasta with no evidence just complete fabrication. And he wonders why he’s the laughing stock of the internet.
Because they’re trying to convince themselves. This is pretty typical in sports.
Pasta,
Obviously you cannot keep up. Let me try to explain to you what happened over the course of the day; I will try to keep things simple for you:
-After making you eat your own words from previous postings (see posts from 2009-07-14 09:53:07 to 2009-07-14 10:25:40 on this page) in regards to UNC, I felt pretty good. So, I decided to do an experiment. Not for school or anything, just independent research. My goal: to see if it is possible to make pasta look any more stupid. My unit of measurement: “Stupid Points”, which from here on out will be referred to as SP. This is what happened, as documented on this blog:
-Your incoherent rambling about “experts widely agreeing” about something either completely idiotic or immeasurable by any means (i.e. Kansas is a laughingstock, or KU’s title is a fluke, Bill Self is a stiff, Calipari is the best coach in the NCAA, placing more value on tournament seedings than winning the tournament etc.) started to annoy me. It would be one thing if you provided links to ANY so-called experts, but you never did.
-At this point, I decided to make you look stupid. I asked multiple times for a link to “experts”. You never provided one. So, I decided to provide one. The Forbes link was a legitimate source that had a legitimate way of ranking these coaches: mathematics, the universal language. I even laughed when I read the part about it being over the course of the past four years. It was all too perfect. (http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/24/ncaa-march-madness-lifestyle-sport_basketball.html) The proof was in the numbers.
-But proof, mathematics, and logic mean nothing to you. Not surprisingly, you dismissed the link, as well as the rankings; perhaps because it was based in fact, not opinion. Or maybe just because you could not come to terms with the fact that you were wrong.— SP count:1
-It was clear that you were flustered at this point. Posts included nothing but insults to people’s intelligence and victory claims, despite all evidence pointing to the fact that YOUR intelligence should be questioned and you had clearly lost.— SP counts 2 and 3
-In a futile and desperate effort to disprove a GOOD ranking system, you decided to provide a link to a better one: http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com/2009/06/03/college-basketballs-top-25-coaches/. Interesting read; unfortunately it provided no account as to how the ranking was achieved, making the ranking itself rather suspect.
-As if that wasn’t bad enough, you cited the FAN VOTE as the most accurate measure of a successful coach (SP count 4). Growing progressively more and more desperate, you threw out outlandish claims like a fan vote being a better indicator of coaching capacity than Win-Loss pct, recruiting, tournament success, etc (SP count 5). Then, to top it all off, you said you could conceive of a numerical system to make Tiger Woods a worse golfer. Ben put you in your place at this point, and I asked for you to prove a way to devise said system, but to no avail. —SP count 6.
-Then, to shove it in your face even more, I provided links to poll results that showed Cal was a cheater and one that said he bore more significance on the future of the United States than President Obama. Just wanted to show you how “legitimate” fan voting really was.
-Obviously, this exercise went way over your head, as you became upset with me for my hypocrisy. You just didn’t understand why I though the only accurate polls were the ones that bashed Cal. You didn’t see the fact that I was simply showing how ridiculously inaccurate ALL polls can be. —SP count 7.
-Then you tried to construe and twist my first link (the legit one) by saying it was based “on random numbers”, even though it states very clearly what numbers the rank was based on. —SP count 8.
-Now I have to write this 8 million word post so that you can understand how stupid I just proved you to be. Trying to explain to a dumb person why they are dumb- it leads to an endless circle; but, nonetheless, it warrants 2 more Stupid Points. That brings the count to 10.
I decided to be a little more eloquent with my explanation of your idiocy than Brett Myers would have been; but, to quote him:
“Boom. Outta here.”
Each of your so called points about being right are of course ….wrong ….your conclusions are based upon your theory that every issue is black and white …..and your opinions are right and mine are wrong …. Ithink anyone reading the posts in an objective manner would find plenty of gray area where opinions can vary . You must be obsessed with my ability to shed a different light on the many biased opinions you post in here . Try to calm down and I’ll try not to make you look so ridiculous in the future .
Wow, I jsut re-read the posts. I never knew noodlenuts was such a dancer. He side stepped half the posts. Needless to say we wont get an answer from him, on any real issue. However we can look forward to the upcomming season, for our predictions to come true obviously, and for his to fail.