It seems like the program is on the upswing. Good job Ags!

Smart thinking!

Good point about this coaching staff finding guys that have been largely overlooked but turn out to be great players. Sometime I feel a little envious that schools like UCSB, LBSU and Hawai'i regularly make offers to players who are being heavily recruited and are rated 3 or 4 stars and occasionally land one or two of them.

Les seems to rarely go after players that have garnered a lot of attention from lots of schools yet he finds players that fit the UCD mold and his system. I think he is just so very well connected with the basketball community at all levels throughout the country that he gets a lot of good tips about under recruited players who have huge development potential. These players are usually really hungry for a chance to play and are appreciative that Les sees something in them and are willing to work very hard in return. Les build teams where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and that has created a winning culture at Davis.

54% shooting overall including 47% from 3 during his high school career is impressive and we all know that Les likes players that can shoot from distance. My guess is that he's a sleeper that has a big growth potential.

Steph Curry was not highly recruited out of high school. He had no major D1 offers (only mid-majors Davidson, Winthrop and Virginia Commonwealth) and Virginia Tech, his father, Dell Curry's alma mater, offered him a walk-on. Maybe Les has found a sharpshooting, diamond-in-the-rough...

Hastings is listed as the #1 QB in San Diego by this SD football analyst:

http://619football.com/2018/04/25/top-10-quarterback-in-san-diego/

It looks like he had a great visit to UCD. Pics posted on his twitter page including a pic with Jake Maier:

https://twitter.com/HastingsMiles

No, he isn't transferring from another college. He's a 2018 high school graduate from the Brewster Academy and should be enrolled as a freshman at UCD this year. Of course, he may redshirt...??

Shaw played at the Brewster Academy in Wildeboro, New Hampshire last season. Brewster Academy is a boarding, prep school that has won 5 prep national championship titles since 2010. They routinely send players to elite, Top 20 schools in college basketball. Shaw had offers from UC Riverside, Cleveland State, William & Mary, Lafayette and American. It looks like he committed to the Ags quickly after he was offered by Les. Their roster list him at 6'6 so maybe he's grown an inch since his playing days at Bishop O'Dowd.

Looks like we posted this news at the same time, PA.

So next season we'll have TJ, AJ and BJ... :cool:

Thanks DrMike. I didn't know that a transfer loses a year of eligibility.

Les gets an awful lot out of the talent he is able to recruit. I'm hoping we've reached the point where we can land a couple of legitimate PAC12 talent players like Hawkins and Moneke on a more regular basis. I feel like the program has turned the corner and that we are now reloading after each season rather than rebuilding after a good season every two or three years. Now we need to continue to grow the program into a Top 10 mid-major like the women are doing.

Great thoughts regarding Strom and the style that Les seems to be leaning towards. Strom looked like he might be a slightly smaller but quicker version of Neal Monson who could bang with the bigs in the paint. The tweet announcing his transfer says he will have 3 years of eligibility left at Omaha after sitting out a year. I didn't think he had burned a year of eligibility with the Ags so it must have something to do with the 5 years to play 4 rule...??

I think you saw him play in the exhibition games last season...?? I never saw him take the floor. He's a big man with a wide body who had a lot of football scholarship offers also so I thought he was going to be a bruiser for us who had range from the outside as well. What were your thoughts of him when you saw him play?

I’ll miss Aileen Voisin. She was the one sports columnist that wrote a lot of nice articles about Aggie Athletics especially basketball and football. She had a lot of admiration for for Jim Les too.

The more I read about Fuller and watch he on video, the more he looks like he could be a very special player for us. The following British basketball website has him listed as a 6'6, 4-star SG with a 6'10 wingspan and they have him ranked as their #1 player for their 2017 UK camp:

http://dengcamp.com/player/caleb-fuller

That's an interesting offer considering all the Top 10 and elite schools he has offers from. Hawk must a feeling for some reason that we can throw our hat in the ring with the big boys and compete for this kid.

Are the Ags going to be in the Ireland tournament?

He looks good on film and is another lefty along with Mooney. We may have been his only offer but Les is really good at finding kids who fly under the radar and fit his basketball philosophy. I seem to remember Les mentioning something in an interview last season about possibly landing an international recruit.

We lost out to Colorado on Shance Gatling who is a junior transfer from Niagara. Gatling is a phenomenal 3 point shooter. Fuller looks like he has a variety of offensive skills and finishes above the rim. I'm excited about the team for this fall when several of our recruits become eligible after transferring in or were red shirted this past season.

The following was posted by NorRidgLum on the Big West Basketball Boards:

Here we go again with a head coach mired with a suspect past. Is Coach Gott implicated? We'll have to wait and see.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/10/spor ... ption.html

Federal prosecutors announced new charges in the continuing college basketball corruption case on Tuesday, adding Kansas and North Carolina State to the list of universities implicated in the scandal.
The prosecutors said that several men, including Jim Gatto, a former Adidas executive, funneled money to high school recruits who attended Kansas and North Carolina State, as well as players who went to Louisville and Miami — programs that were already known to be related to the case — in exchange for those recruits’ commitments to those universities. All four universities are sponsored by Adidas. The trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 1.

Sanders scored 25 points in the Girl's Small School Optimist basketball game a couple of days ago. Mackenzie Forbes' brother is Mason Forbes and he scored 22 points in the Boy's Large School Optimist game. He is going to play at Harvard next year and Mackenzie will be playing for Cal. I wonder if we tried to recruit either of these players. They are both talented basketball players and both value academics.

PBS is showing "The Boys of '36" on KVIE Sacramento. It will air on Monday the 9th at 10 pm.