re: LSU Basketball Recruiting Thread - OLD THREAD PLEASE STICKY NEW ONE

Well fellas, today was a rough day for basketball recruiting.

First we don't get Cisse, which was expected due to recent trends and info.

But to add salt in the wound, news breaks that Anei (the Ok St. transfer) has transferred to SMU. Why the hell someone would choose SMU over LSU with our recent success and Wade's ability is beyond me. The only obvious reason would be negative recruiting telling him that he'd be jumping to another school about to get hit with sanctions, which is why he left Okie St.

Oh well, it happens. I'm pissed about it, but not at Wade and the staff. Pissed, obviously, about the internal and external forces screwing with all of that. We'll still have a solid to good team this year and should definitely make the tourney, especially if Watford returns. But it's hard not to think of what would have been if we could have gotten either Cisse or Anei.

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With the talent lsu has at all positions, how can we not convince a center to sign 2 yrs in a row?

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I don't know, man. Not sure anyone can answer that without speculating some.

To me, Wade has proven that he can recruit and attract highly ranked and talented players; even ones far away. So I don't believe the issue is with Wade and the staff not doing their job.

So if it is not their recruiting ability, then the only thing you can look to is just the dark cloud of the NCAA recruiting violations hanging over the program and other schools using it to negatively recruit LSU.

I know people will say, as they have, but why would Cisse choose Memphis then, when they face a similar issue and should likely receive their sanctions before LSU ever does. The only thing I can say is just that one, LSU's issues have been made way more public thanks to assholes like Vitale and other media members keeping LSU to the forefront and making Wade the poster child. So like most things, perception is a bitch and generally has more impact than the actual truth. Two, Cisse has lived in Memphis for a year now and has more connections to there than a place like Baton Rouge where he didn't even get to make a visit to, which I think has been overlooked in all of this. And three, like it or not, believe if he is a capable coach or not, Penny is a big name draw as a coach and appealing to a player that wants to go to the NBA in a year, where Penny still has a lot of useful contacts.

As for Anei, like I stated before, the only logical reason to choose SMU is that they or someone negatively recruited LSU to him too. It's logical to think that someone would be telling him something along the lines of, "hey, you have 2 years left to play and just left a school hit with recruiting sanctions; so why would you go to a place like LSU that is going to likely get hit with some while you are there." In that case, you can't blame the kid for wanting to somewhat choose the safer route in going to SMU.

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We got outbid for Cisse. I think it’s pretty obvious

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Pretty much

Watford is needed to make a serious run IMO.

Yes there is one at a juco in Texas thats available but i am not sure the staff even knows about him.

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Having an NBA team in your backyard helps Penny's recruiting immensely

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Maybe, but before Cisse, Memphis had the #133 ranked class.

Big get for CWW and the Tigers in Bryan Penn-Johnson. That seems to wrap up 2020 recruiting and I will start to transition the thread to 2021 and 2022 recruiting.

how is it determined who gets waivers to play immediately?

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The NCAA decides, there's really no precedent and it's pretty random

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This is a big problem when they NCAA can make arbitrary decisions on who plays and who sits.