re: USC vs Mizzou Game Thread 65-71

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I think you'll be better than a top 6-10 team year in and year out. I think Martin will get you guys in the top 5 and from time to time the top 3. Don't be surprised if you make the tourney as soon as next year. Little bit easier to turn around a basketball program than a football program. Takes a good class and it sounds like you have a couple back to back now.

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What SC has going for it in terms of basketball is that we produce a fair amount of outstanding basketball talent in this state. Now, typically we've been losing them to out-of-state schools like UCONN, UNC, 'Cuse, various ACC schools, etc. Martin is focusing on them to keep them home.

I still say we would have won the national championship the last time we won the conference with the finest backcourt in the history of the SEC in McKie, Watson and Davis, all three made first team All-SEC in the same season ... and that year we were supposed to have Kevin Garnet and Jermaine O'Neal (both committed to us) as the big men to go along with everything else we had - good gosh, the NBA just fawked-us on that one.

But the key is to keep the instate talent home and, if we do that, then we build off of the Frank McGuire legacy that brought basketball to this state in the 60s and continues to produce outstanding talent today.

We produce enough talent in this state to field a tourney talented basketball team every year - we just have to keep it home.

Devan Downey went to Cincy to play for Huggins until he transferred back here and became 1st team All-SEC. We've actually got a couple of South Carolinians transferring home from other schools now that Martin has arrived ... and, to me at least, that is huge for us.

I know Mizzou has St Louis and Memphis to draw from. If we need to go out of SC for talent we can sometimes reach down into Georgia for a player or two. And Martin seems to have good connections in Miami and all through Florida.

We need big men. We're going to have one of the finer backcourts in the country in the next couple of years based upon his current commitments, but we gotta find some big men, some post players.

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True, but we probably get more talent from Kansas City than those two. There is a lot of basketball talent in KC, and some MU greats have come from there. The southeast part of Missouri also produces some fantastic basketball talent. We really do recruit from all over though - New Jersey, Canada, California, Texas, etc.

The SEC has what it needs to be a great basketball league too. Hope we get it there.

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You bring up a good point because Martin has made reference to going back to KC, St Louie and Memphis to recruit and he's said before that there is a lot of good talent out there. Whether or not he can talk any of them into coming to SC to be near the beaches and pretty girls - I dunno, but I suppose he'll probably try. I guess he has some contacts built back in that area from his time at KSU maybe?

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You bring up a good point because Martin has made reference to going back to KC, St Louie and Memphis to recruit and he's said before that there is a lot of good talent out there. Whether or not he can talk any of them into coming to SC to be near the beaches and pretty girls - I dunno, but I suppose he'll probably try. I guess he has some contacts built back in that area from his time at KSU maybe?

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My guess is he'll try to land the top in-state player or two each year but he'll go outside the borders to make you competitive.

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That's not to say there isn't talent coming out of St. Louis, they just don't go to Mizzou often enough. Bradley Beal, David Lee, Larry Hughes to name a few off the top of my head.

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This is what I was saying the other day. We get a lot of good talent out of KC (Dixon, Denmon, Kareem Rush, etc) but there is just as much coming out of STL. For some reason though, MU basketball has always had trouble recruiting the east side of the state. I've heard it was because Norm Stewart did not have a very good relationship with a lot of HS coaches from that area.

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He got on the bad side of the coaches at the inner-city schools and it plagued him his entire career.

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Floyd Irons at Vashon when they were a national power. Floyd thought he was bigger than life (and in a way he was in the City) and for whatever reason, didn't get along with Norm. I was only in high school at the time, but the word we always heard was Floyd had made a push to get on Norm's staff and was turned away. Have no idea if there's any truth to it but I can see Floyd reacting that way if it was true.