Sparty Tears are Tasting Sweet Today
I work in Lansing, so I get to listen to Lansing sports talk radio in the morning and afternoon. And my, oh my, the Sparty tears over Brandon Johns are tasting so sweet today. All day yesterday, the people on the radio refused to believe the Brandon-to-Michigan rumors were true. And today, they're just in disbelief that we would beat them for a hometown recruit that they really, really wanted.
If you want to sample the reaction on the RCMB, the two takes seem to be:
1. MSU didn't really want him (no, you really DID want him)
2. He sucks anyway (and yet you still really wanted him)
Here's the thread so you can enjoy it for yourself. Pride comes before the fall, and it seems like the fall isn't close to stopping yet.
http://michiganstate.247sports.com/Board/93/Contents/Brandon-Johns-a-ju…
I'm guessing the people who saw Nance commit to Northwestern today came back to neg it
Isn't the "We really didn't want him", and "he sucks anyways" generally the go to responses from any college sports fan that is upset about 'crutin?
certainly the case over the past years with football players coming to A2 from Ohio.
Another Sparty favorite (though not so much in hoops) is the "we don't want egomaniac 4-star and 5-star recruits anyway, we'll do much better with angry 2-star guys..."
They are claiming Johns should not be ranked #1 in Michigan but somewhere between 3 and 9....
Also Izzo cooled on him after a 5 year recruitment. 5 is between 3 and 9 years FWIW.
No, wait, I saw a guy post on RCMB that people are seriously overrating Beilein's talent development ability. They said that DJ Wilson was a top player in Northern California, so he was an obvious draft pick, and that Burke was really a top 10 in the nation type guy, and Stauskas was the second best player in Canada, so Beilein is overhyped.
It's unreal what extent people will go to in order to rationalize what they want to believe.
'Merica
I've come to the same conclusion recently.
What amazes me is how often presenting facts that run counter to their beliefs results in them simply digging in further.
Funny thing is Denzel and Nik were in the same class ranked almost identical in said class. One was a Big 10 player of the year candidate in year 2 and developed enough to go the NBA. The other stayed 4 years. Development?
I love how guys paths in the NBA are dependent on their college coach. Because Lloyd Carr made Tom Brady! The college coach gets them to their league - something Beilein is fucking crushing Izzo at despite Izzo outrecruiting in rankings by a large margin. We dont get piles of McDonalds All Americans like he does. What development did he do with McDonald's All american Branden Dawson except teach him to punch walls? Guy couldnt get a jump shot after 4 years in the program.
Once they get to the league a million things factor into it - such as if you go to the Browns/Lions or the Patriots/Steelers in NFL terms. Dude has Draymond Green and Zac Randolph in 20 years as real success stories and they are here shitting on Burke. Top 10 player in the nation out of HS? lol. News to us. Izzo has been a massive underachiever in NBA talent development - massive.
Yeah, always drives me nuts seeing the guys Beilein was really after that went elsewhere and sure enough, they turn out to be good players of varying quality, but rarely a bust. Thinking guys like Trevon Bluiett, Vince Edwards, etc
is a real bitch, Izzo. JB has demonstrated pretty clearly that he can get guys to the next level and that UM is a big stage on which to play. Keep it up!
lot of people over on RCMB are saying things like "he must be soft" and "have fun jacking up 3s and playing no defense" like we are some garbage program. Seems like they forgot that we 1) beat them by 30 points this year, 2) won the BIG tournament, and 3) went to the Sweet 16, while they 1) sucked, 2) got lucky to be in the tournament with their record, and 3) only won a game because they were seriously like the most overseeded team ever in the NCAA tournament.
On the plus side that person has a future as a BBall broadcaster as they all talk about the patented Belien 1-3-1 defense and then are confounded when we play 90+% man on man.....
I pos'd the OP.
I should be above all this immaturity.
But I'm not.
it never seemed MSU was all-in in recruiting him. Sure they recruited him and I think they would have taken him. But I do think MSU had other targets they valued more than Johns.
I think the general feeling most had about Johns was that if he went in-state it would be Michigan but was really looking to get away, hence the visits to Indiana, Purdue and interest of Iowa State and Missouri among others.
Johns is a good player, with a lot of potential to be really good but he's never struck me as the kind of player Tom Izzo recruits for his program. Basically his style of play fits John Beilein better than Izzo, there's nothing wrong with that. Johns going to MSU would have been a bad fit and I think both parties knew that.
These statements can exist in the world of basketball.
don't know. Basically every freshman that suited up for State last year was a bad fit for Izzo but he still recruited them. It strikes me as really odd that Izzo would not go hard after a consensus 4 star from East Lansing. I prefer to believe that Beilein broke their hearts in a stunning recruting coup.
how good he really is. He has flaws and I've watched a couple teams shut him down. He gets a lot of garbage and transition points and it seems its harder for him to dominate a game that someone of that talent ranking. Nice frame but chicken legs.
I think he could have a really big Sr. season, his team is a little less talented this year and will rely on him more than they already did.
Basically I keep seeing him rise in the rankings and I'm like, really?
be true, and I defer to you if you have seen him in person. But from the video I've seen, he has a killer baseline/wing 3 pointer. That is a lethal weapon in Beilein's offense. Perhaps you are right, this could have been a fit thing, but I like the looks of him for this program.
matchup on the perimeter, his shot is certainly what caught Beileins eye, but he's also learning to put the ball on the floor which could earn him an NBA gig someday with his size. People will learn quickly he can dunk ridiculously easy and its his athletic potential that should get people excitied.
don't like lazy comparisons within a program, but his game does reming me a lot of GR3 with a slightly more polished jumper.
but Johns finds himself under the basket more. But its high school ball, and he's tall. So yeah.
Any chance you're not the greatest talent evaluator in the world, in that you seem to disagree with, well, all the recruiting sites, and a dozen top-level DI coaches?
Or maybe you've been living in Lansing too long? That's gotta take a significant cognitive toll over time...
I'm a terrible high school talent evaluator. I guess I see rankings and hype and such and expect guys to wow me. Johns is a good player, he doesn't wow me. I saw he and Livers play each other this Spring, Livers looked like a much better overall player. One year older and another year of developement of course. I definately think Johns is going to get better and I think his Sr. season might show that. I'm very happy he chose Michigan, I just don't expect the world of him.
have been there with a player before. I lived near Flint for a lot of my life and watched a lot of players come through those schools. Peterson and Bell were both fantastic in high school and you could tell they had long and lucrative basketball futures. Then I heard about Torbert, so I went to a couple of games. He was like in the Top 10 or 15 players nationally at the time and I think I watched him score 16 and 18 points and generally thinking "meh." That turned out to be the case too.
Oh come on! This is not the time or the place to be rational!
We're supposed to be celebrating a head to head win over the antichrist, not acknowledging that there was a thoughtful process that went into the recruitment by all parties!
Sparty just added WR recruit Javez Alexander to its 2018 class, helping to fill in some gaps. This is their first WR in the class, and they beat out the likes of Air Force, Bowling Green, Eastern Kentucky and Georgetown to get him.
The best news for MSU? He's totally unranked! And he's currently a QB rather than a WR.
He's a total diamond in the rough, under-the-radar type that will give MSU's coaching staff a huge opportunity to build him up. So no need to be crying in E. Lansing - one hand taketh away, another hand gives.
Hold on for a minute.
Georgetown has a football team?
Kidding aside, if the kid had an Air Force offer, he's likely to not be a character risk or an academic risk. I don't think the service academies take high risk kids, even if they're good athletes. It would be nice to see that become more of an emphasis at MSU.
With that in mind, I hope he has a great academic career at MSU, and does well as an individual while playing on MSU teams that never surpass five wins a season - and loses every game to Michigan.
that program needs to go back to square one, get players that want to be there for the right reasons and coach them up. It was clear the last couple of years, watching them play and listening to players and coaches that winning had become a very single minded focus to the exclusion of all other considerations. I thought Malik McDowell's mother being so singularly opposed to her son going there speaks to what kind of culture was being fostered at Michigan State.
to completely mischaracterize my statement.
There are between 3 - 9 other indicators of the trajectory of a program than just wins and losses.
that will give MSU's coaching staff a huge opportunity to build him upthat will give MSU's staff a huge opportunity to brainwash him and put a huge chip on his shoulder. #disrespekt
time Lansing player away from Sparty? It seems like it's been a very long time.
Horford from Grand Ledge, but again Sparty never seemed all-in on him. Have to go all the way back to Mr. Basketball Robert Henderson, Lansing Eastern in early 80's I think.
Michigan has had releatively few Lansing area players.
I can't bear to go to RCMB anymore, but if it is anything like it has been historically, I can only imagine the seething rage, steeped in insecurity and conveyed in thinly veiled attempts at downplaying talent and unwitty cracks and weird accusations regarding Michigan. It's almost an East Lansing tradition when we win a recruiting battle because we've hurt their feelings and they want a cookie or something.