High School Recruiting

S

Spider2020

Bench player
Mooney has repeatedly stated that he wants high school recruiting to be our main source of talent, even in the transfer era. I’m not opposed to this at all - as we have seen, as P5’s focus more on transfers, there are lots of great high school recruits up for grabs. On a personal level, I actually would prefer to watch young guys who choose Richmond from the start thrive here. I thought since Mooney wants to focus on high school recruiting, maybe we should take a look at his track record.

I went through the last decade of high school recruits (excluding walk ons), and categorized each as a hit, miss, or somewhere in between. To me, a “hit” is a guy who has the ability to be a high level A10 starter for at least 2 of his 4 years of eligibility. I understand there will be some differences of opinion on my classifications, but here’s my summary:

Hits (7):
Buckingham (2016)
Sherod (2016)
Golden (2016)
Gilyard (2017)
Cayo (2017)
Burton (2019)
Argabright (2025)

Misses (15):
Schneider (2017)
Ford (2017)
Verbinskis (2017)
Koureissi (2018)
Wojcik (2018)
Weir (2020)
Wilson (2020)
Nelson (2021)
Randolph (2021)
Dread (2021)
Noyes (2021)
Smith (2023)
Tanner (2023)
Soulis (2023)
McGlothin (2024)

Somewhere in between/ TBD (9):
Gustavson (2018)
Grace (2018)
Bailey (2020)
Walz (2022)
Tyne (2023)
Robinson (2024)
Richardson (2025)
Harper (2025)
Homenick (2025)

Mooney is hitting on high school recruits about 23% of the time (with 6/7 of those being from 2019 and earlier), and missing about 48% of the time. Before Argabright, we really had not “hit” on a high school recruit since 2019.

If high school recruiting is going to be the main source of our talent, we need to bring in someone who is actually capable of evaluating high school recruits. Mooney’s inability to consistently bring in high level players is why our program is in its current awful state.

TLDR: Our high school recruiting has been terrible for the last 8ish years!
 
Agree. It's extremely telling that no one is raiding UR's team for high major players. Literally no one wants our guys at the HM level bc we don't recruit well.

Basically tons of lower level schools are recruiting much better, developing much better and we portal in their players, but we have no great player core to add them to, just some developmental guys like Walz (0.7 ppg as a freshman), Tanner (0.7 ppg as a freshman), et all.

I'd add a sub-level to the Misses, which would be Bad Misses. Schneider, Ford, Verbinskis, Dread and possibly Smith and McGlothin, though McG could be coaching malpractice for all we know at this point.

Who was lead recruiter on the 3 classes from Buckingham/Sherod/Golden to Burton?

Staff should mostly be cleared out this offseason, honestly. Terrible recruiters, terrible schedulers, terrible defensive sets. It's Moon's offense and we know he's going nowhere so we're stuck with that.
 
Agree Brownstone. Just a bunch of Mooney clones. As you note, no one is raiding our players. And no one has sniffed our coach in 14 years.
 
KE Spider said:
Come on guys. When it comes to recruiting Gipe is as sharp as a knife. :unsure:
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giphy.gif
 
Our high school recruiting has generally been quite poor. As others have pointed out, we had a chance in 2011 to leverage back to back tournament appearances into a strong class and pretty much laid an egg. Then CM went back to guys who were “under recruited” a lot of times, or he just flat out couldn’t close the deal with better players.

I feel like he doesn’t even try to get 3 star guys, much less anyone higher. Perhaps some of it is a feeling we can’t afford those guys, but it feels mostly like we just can’t sell the program. That’s not surprising given we are drought ridden when it comes to the tournament.
 
And don’t forget it takes 3/4 years for players to play well in our system and if they are actually good they will get poached in this new version of college basketball - this guy doesn’t have a chance.
 
I agree with whoever posted that it seems to almost be a strategy that the UR coaches are employing to get guys who take time to develop so that by the time they are decent they are entrenched in the UR system.

No one is poaching Mike Walz after averaging 0.7 and 2.8 points per game his first 2 years.

Looking back at some years that absolutely should have been NCAA seasons, it is criminal the recruiting misses that sabotaged those teams.
 
*23* said:
I agree. His mood when the question was asked was very somber.
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If I were him I would consider either a transfer to a quality mid major where he feels like he would get big minutes and be a big stat guy for them, or stay here and get a ton of minutes and be a big stat guy for what will likely be a bad team.

Either way, he can build big stats and prepare himself for maybe a bigger payday in year 3 or 4. If he moves up now, I don't see him getting a lot of money, and then if his minutes are not there next year, he would lose out on a big payday for years 3 and 4.
 
vt4700 said:
If I were him I would consider either a transfer to a quality mid major where he feels like he would get big minutes and be a big stat guy for them, or stay here and get a ton of minutes and be a big stat guy for what will likely be a bad team.

Either way, he can build big stats and prepare himself for maybe a bigger payday in year 3 or 4. If he moves up now, I don't see him getting a lot of money, and then if his minutes are not there next year, he would lose out on a big payday for years 3 and 4.
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I tend to agree with this. I think he can make a big jump in year two. He probably can leverage some offers and get a good chunk here or another mid major - and his production and stats will take a jump. The big payday would be year 3 and the big boys will have a lot of tape and feel better about him too.

The possibility of getting buried on the bench (even though love his game) is real, just b/c you will be competing with a room of 5 really good guards. I do look at the guy I mentioned that went from Delaware to Tech- Pasha. CAA rookie of the year. Buried on the bench at Tech. I did hear he got a crazy NIL deal, so may be worth it. But from a basketball standpoint, it probably stunted his growth. A new coach and Richmond would be a great landing spot for him :).
 
Eight Legger said:
Marcus Jenkins was a good recruiter, and so was Maurice Joseph. Otherwise, been awhile since we've had one.
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I liked MoJo but he was only here for 1 year. May be a good recruiter but irrelevant to Richmond. I don't think he recruited anyone here. Seemingly the main guy for Finley Bizjack who just ended up at his next school Butler.
 
From the Florida website:
From 2005-08, Hartman worked as assistant coach and was the lead recruiter at Richmond for three seasons where he recruited three of the top scorers in program history, including future NBA Draft pick Justin Harper.
 
And maybe can add Hartman was forced to resign whilst the head coach aka Teflon Chris only made excuses and took no responsibility.
 
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