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The heat is on Summer recruiting faces scrutiny from Kramer, coaches
Posted: Thursday January 13, 2000 05:56 PM
By Josh Kendall, Special to CNNSI.com Conference commissioner Roy Kramer has been on a crusade to end summer recruiting for a while now. Last week, he challenged his colleagues at the NCAA's annual convention to have the courage to end the 24-day period in July that Kramer believes is the source of most of the violations in the recruiting process. Kramer fears that the AAU coaches, who have control of the players in the summer and the shoe companies who sponsor all-star tournaments and camps, have too big an impact on where players choose to go to school. During Thursday's teleconference, several of the SEC's coaches responded to Kramer's rant. Florida's Billy Donovan, who has brought two consecutive outstanding recruiting classes to Gainesville, said he is vehemently opposed to ending or even shortening the period. Donovan feels it gives an unfair advantages to the "name" programs like Kentucky, Kansas and North Carolina that every high school player in America already knows about. "I think the way it is right now, it allows a team like Florida to go recruit," he said. "They have to give us some time to go out. Every so often they keep cutting days back and cutting days back." To no one's surprise, South Carolina coach Eddie Fogler disagrees with Donovan. Fogler and Donovan don't see eye-to-eye, as evidenced by last year's media days when Fogler went out of his way to insinuate that Donovan's recruiting practices were shady. "Due to the well-known problems in summer recruiting, I am of the opinion that we should shut it down for two years in the summer and come up with a better way," Fogler said. "Will it be perfect? No. But what we have now is not working. [Shoe companies] are influencing young men to certain schools. Anybody that disagrees with that is not playing with a full deck of cards. That's as nicely as I can say it." Georgia's Jim Harrick and Arkansas' Nolan Richardson, the two most veteran coaches in the league, come down somewhere between Donovan and Fogler. Harrick said he would be in favor of shortening the period to 14 days, which has been suggested as an alternative to eliminating it, and Richardson said something should be done to get high school coaches more involved in the recruiting process.
Human pin cushionVanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said he would try anything to help center Greg LaPointe deal with his back pain. He proved it Wednesday when he had an acupuncture specialist travel with the team to its game against Tennessee.LaPointe, who started last year but has been slowed all season by two bulging discs in his back, exhausted several more traditional treatment options earlier in the season before turning to acupuncture before last week's game against Florida. It worked as he was pain free while playing 19 minutes and scoring seven points on 3 of 4 shooting. "I would send him to get voodoo if I thought it would relieve his back pain," Stallings said. "We need him." To that end, Stallings found a retired anesthesiologist to accompany the team to Knoxville, Tenn. LaPointe received treatment before the game and during halftime and again played 19 minutes, scoring five points and grabbing six rebounds. During halftime, the doctor stuck one needle under the 6-10, 235-pounder's nose to relieve his pain. "It was the wildest thing I've ever seen," Stallings said. "The guy stuck the needle below his nose and Greg's back felt better." If Stallings is a superstitious man he might keep sticking LaPointe with needles even if the junior's back quits hurting. After beating Tennessee 76-73 on Wednesday night, the Commodores are 11-2 overall and 2-1 in the league. That's very impressive considering Vandy started its SEC schedule against Florida and then at Kentucky and at Tennessee. "What it does for us on a immediate basis is validate us a little bit and give us a good feeling about ourselves," Stallings said. "But every game in this league is tough so it doesn't do any good to win a tough road game and come back home and lose. You have to stay with it. Keeping an even keel is important in conference play."
Harrick calls 'em like he sees 'emGeorgia coach Jim Harrick caused a lot of commotion after last week's 15-point loss to Auburn when he declined to label the Tigers a national championship caliber team because of their "adequate" guard play. Although Auburn coach Cliff Ellis said he didn't think Harrick was slighting his team, the comments got plenty of play in several newspapers across the Southeast, particularly after Tiger point guard Doc Robinson hit the winning 3-pointer against Kentucky on Tuesday night.Harrick didn't let that instance keep him from speaking his mind about the Bulldogs' next opponent. After losing by 20 points to Arkansas on Wednesday night, he had this to say about the Razorbacks: "You can say, 'Well, you [Georgia] had a bad game tonight.' But I'm not so sure. I don't think [Arkansas] played so well. They're not a great team at all." Anybody offended by Harrick's remarks can take comfort in the fact that he has saved the most biting comments for his own team. Several of his remarks Wednesday after the Bulldogs' fourth consecutive loss were characteristic of the frank nature he has shown since joining the league.
Worth notingVanderbilt's Dan Langhi is averaging 25.3 points per conference game. Langhi scored 31 in the Commodores upset at Tennessee on Wednesday, marking the second time he has topped 30 in three league games. ... Auburn coach Cliff Ellis said preseason All-American Chris Porter was doing fine after injuring his elbow during Tuesday night's nationally televised win over Kentucky. Porter took a hard blow on his elbow and went down in obvious pain but returned to the game shortly thereafter. ... Tennessee coach Jerry Green said Thursday that he made a mistake by not substituting more in the second half of his team's loss to Vandy. "If there is a thing that I'd go back and say, maybe we good have kept them a little bit fresher," Green said. "We've got to go with a little more depth than we did in the second half." The Volunteers starting perimeter players -- Tony Harris, Jon Higgins and Vincent Yarbrough -- combined to shoot 5 of 25 in the loss.Josh Kendall covers the SEC for the Athens (Ga.) Daily News/Banner-Herald. Check back each Thursday for his latest CNNSI.com Insider.
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