http://www.cbssports.com/college-basketball/news/how-tubby-smith-made-a-gigantic-mess-of-memphis-program-in-just-one-year/How Tubby Smith made a gigantic mess of Memphis' program in just one year
A year ago this week, after paying Josh Pastner $1.25 million to (please) take the
Georgia Tech job,
Memphis offered Tubby Smith a five-year, $15.45 million contract to coach its men's basketball team. He accepted. And what Smith then inherited was a program featuring four former top-100 recruits (
Dedric Lawson,
K.J. Lawson,
Markel Crawford, Nick Marshall) and another top-100 prospect (
Charlie Moore) signed to a national letter of intent.
Not bad.
But it's pretty bad now.
Marshall transferred to a junior college last offseason while Moore instead enrolled at
California, where he averaged 12.2 points and 3.5 assists this season. Now Crawford and both Lawsons -- that's the Tigers' three leading scorers
and rebounders -- have announced they're also transferring, meaning there are six Memphis players who have said they're transferring since the end of this season. Only two players (
Jeremiah Martin and
Jimario Rivers) are set to return. ......
Keelon Lawson swears Bowen told him he would remain on staff as a full-time assistant no matter who Memphis hired. But that didn't happen. Because Memphis hired Smith, who demoted Lawson to a made-up position called director of player development.
Publicly, Keelon Lawson said the right things.
Privately, he felt wronged.
Which led to Dedric and K.J. -- who combined to average 31.5 points, 18 rebounds and 6.1 assists this season -- last week announcing a transfer. Early Monday,
they committed to Kansas . And when I asked Keelon Lawson on Monday if Dedric and K.J. would still be Tigers if he were still a full-time assistant, he answered, "Yes. Of course." In other words, Smith's decision to demote Keelon Lawson cost Memphis two players Kansas can't wait to use to win another Big 12 title. And do you know how many top-100 recruits Smith's three full-time assistants have committed? Zero. Not one. But they are scheduled to soon host a prospect who is currently committed to a Division II school. And I'm not even making that up.....
Bottom line, in less than a year on the job, Smith has lost four former top-100 prospects to the transfer market and added zero top-100 prospects to replace them. And he burned his most valuable bridge to the fertile Memphis recruiting base when he demoted Keelon Lawson -- who, in addition to being Dedric and K.J.'s dad, is also the father of
a top-25 prospect in the Class of 2019, the father of
a top-10 prospect in the Class of 2021 and the uncle of
a top-10 prospect in the Class of 2021. If Keelon Lawson never did anything but secure commitments from prospects related to him, he would've eventually enrolled five top-55 national recruits, four of whom will likely go down as McDonald's All-Americans. Plus, because his younger sons play for Team Penny, a summer program based in Memphis, NCAA rules would not have forbidden Keelon Lawson from being in the gym for Team Penny practices and games during times when no other college assistant would've had access. This is what having Keelon Lawson on staff meant for Memphis. He
would've enrolled his sons and
could've enrolled his nephew all while providing an inroad to the rest of the local talent. Now, that's over. And Memphis will instead spend the next week
trying to convince a player to pick the Tigers over Ouachita Baptist.....
Tubby Smith, to be clear, is a good coach and a good man who has taken five different schools to the
NCAA Tournament. So it's not impossible to envision him eventually getting Memphis there, too -- in two or three years. But Memphis fans have never been much interested in enrolling three-star prospects and trying to be good. Memphis fans have forever supported a program that enrolls four-star and five-star prospects and tries to be great. And, with few exceptions, the historical key to doing that has been to recruit Memphis....
