Wired Wednesday With Wilson 3rd Edition
Welcome to the 3rd edition of “Wired Wednesday With Wilson”. This week we took a look at a somewhat surprising NCAA tournament team, Wes Miller coaching future and an intriguing question about the NCAA recruiting period.
“Which 2 teams in the NCAA tournament have surprised you the most far?” – @pr0ia
I can’t really say I am surprised about anyone that much due to the fact that this has been one of the chalkiest tournaments in quite some time. In three of the four regions, all of the top four seeds are in the sweet 16, one region has the top three and the fifth seed and then there is the south that has a team that I can talk about to answer this question. It has the top three seeds all in the sweet 16 but then there is the 12th seed, Oregon. Oregon started their magical March run two weeks at the Pac 12 tournament where they were the 4th seed and had to win the conference tournament just to make the NCAA tournament. Dana Altman and his team looked dead in the water in the middle of February but suddenly have turned it around winning 10 straight and have not lost since February 23rd. They certainly have the talent to knock off Virginia and then either Purdue or Tennessee to make it to the final four and certainly would not be shocked to see them in Minnesota next weekend as they are one of the hottest team’s in the country. So no, I am not surprised to see them in the sweet 16 because of the roster they have but I am surprised to see them in the sweet 16 after where the team was a little over a month ago.
“Is Wes Miller getting any offers from other colleges?” – @edwards_wes
Photo Credit – Yahoo SportsWes Miller has had a great start to his coaching career at UNC Greensboro going 141-117 since the 2011. He is also one of the youngest coaches in the country at the age of 36. There has been a lot of speculation about when he might make the jump to a bigger program after the success he has had at Greensboro. Miller is a guy that could recruit the south as he knows the area extremely well so I can certainly see one of these current SEC openings take a hard look at him.
“Why isn’t there a recruiting dead periods surrounding the NCAA postseason? Seems questionable that bad teams get a 2+ week jump start on spring and transfer recruiting while good teams still have high stake games to prepare and travel to?” -@HoosPlace
Quite possibly the best question I have received since I started this column and I might not have the accurate answer on this topic but I am going to give it my best. When a head coach gets hired, the most important thing to do right away is to build a good staff of assistant coaches. A coach wants assistant coaches that can recruit well and has certain ties to particular regions of the country that has good relationships with high schools and AAU programs. Even though a program is making a deep run in the NCAA tournament, these assistant coaches are keeping tabs of who is on the top of their recruiting boards, keeping track of names entering the transfer portal and keeping up a good relationship with their top recruits. One thing that also helps teams that might have a longer season than teams who are already done is there is not that much organized basketball going on at this time which means a lot of college coaches are not missing seeing recruits play. I asked my colleagues what they thought about this question and my guy Jack Herron had a good point, “Bad teams in the NBA get a jump on the best players…same kinda thing.” So it is a very interesting topic to discuss but overall I do not seeing it being a big disadvantage to teams trying to make it to the final four.