I am a firm believer that 75% of coaching in college basketball is recruiting, and so with that in mind, I’ll rank the 12 coaches in the Southeastern Conference based on their recruiting prowess, then I‘ll do the same with coaching prowess tomorrow. I’m still reeling from hearing Dicky Lyons Jr. at football media day, so let’s not waste anymore time.

12. Jeff Lebo (Auburn)

I don’t think Jeff Lebo is very good at all. In fact, I’m not really sure why Auburn decided to part ways with Cliff Ellis. You always knew what you would get with Ellis: a few good years followed by a few bad years, lather, rinse, repeat. With Lebo, the good year has just not happened yet, and it mainly has to do with the players he has recruited. I remember a Fox Sports broadcast on FSN where Eddie Fogler of all people said it best. I don’t remember it verbatim, but he said that if you won basketball games on athleticism alone, Auburn would win the conference every year. Those great athletes just haven’t become good basketball players yet. The Tigers have needed a shooter since Toney Douglas transferred to Florida State, and that guy has never arrived yet. At least there’s football, right?

11. Andy Kennedy (Ole Miss)

I think Andy Kennedy is a GREAT coach, but that’s for tomorrow. I give him credit for locking up Chris Warren last season on fairly short notice, because Warren’s going to be the best point guard in the conference for the next three years, but the rest of my reasons for this ranking are a bit unfair. Kennedy hasn’t been a head coach very long, and in his one year at Cincinnati, he didn’t stock that program with the type of players they had been accustomed to having. To be fair to Kennedy, UC absolutely screwed him over and they didn’t give him a chance, but unless he was the head recruiter for Bob Huggins at UC, then there’s a lot of room for improvement.

10. Darrin Horn (South Carolina)

This is another tough ranking because I have nothing on which to base it except Horn’s tenure at Western Kentucky. For Western Kentucky, Horn did a great job, always compiling the best talent in the Sun Belt. But the SEC is a different animal, and Horn has an additional uphill battle to climb because Oliver Purnell has finally gotten the recruiting ball rolling at Clemson and he’s racking up the in-state recruits. Horn hasn’t picked up any huge recruits at this point in his tenure, but it hasn’t been long, so my message to the Cock fans is patience.

9. Dennis Felton (Georgia)

Dennis Felton picks up good recruits, but that isn’t his problem. If you’ve followed college basketball news, you might know that Georgia had to kick another one off the team this summer. This is the problem Dennis Felton has faced at Georgia, and this is why he isn’t higher on my list – he can’t keep guys on his team. Has he ever heard of a background check? I think he has one of the best freshmen n the conference this year in big man Howard Thompkins, but I hope the kid can stay out of trouble for Felton’s sake. Also, the guys he keeps on his teams are clumsy oafs who hurt other players, which is another knock in my book.

8. Mark Gottfried (Alabama)

For all the crap I give Mark Gottfried as a coach (all of it deserved, by the way), he’s actually a really smart recruiter. He gets almost all of his talent from Alabama and Mississippi, which is good for him because those states produce some of the best players in the country every year. Just look at this list of guys he’s gotten: Rod Grizzard, Erwin Dudley, Kenny Walker, Maurice Williams, Gerald Wallace, Chuck Davis, Kennedy Winston, Ron Steele, Richard Hendrix and Jamychal Green. That’s solid, folks, and every one of them was near his backyard. In other conferences, this would garner a higher ranking, but the SEC has some better recruiters.

7. Trent Johnson (LSU)

I give Johnson points because I believe he was the head recruiter for Mike Montgomery all those years Montgomery was at Stanford, then when he took the Nevada job, he set that program up for a good run with his recruits. Finally, when he came back to Stanford, he picked up the Lopez twins and brought Stanford back to where they were when he was on the staff. Getting some of the classes he got at Stanford with that school’s academic requirements is pretty impressive. I deduct points from Johnson because when he took the LSU job, J’Mison Morgan, their prized recruit from Texas, decommitted immediately and went to UCLA. Something’s not right if an LSU coach can’t lock up a Texas guy.

6. Kevin Stallings (Vanderbilt)

What Stallings does at Vanderbilt is amazing. The school doesn’t even have an athletics program, and he has started to being in some incredible classes. I don’t know how they’ll do at Vandy, but Stallings has a solid formula going: recruit shooters. Have you ever noticed the insane number of shooters the Commodores have every year? This isn’t a coincidence. A lot of the top AAU camps have been ruined by the popularity of the And1 Tour, and the shooters get left out, so they fly under the radar and end up at Vanderbilt and Butler. It’s a revolving door of 3-4 shooters that come and go each year, none better than R&B superstar Shan(e) Foster.

5. John Pelphrey (Arkansas)

John is in the same boat as Darrin Horn, having to adjust to the transition from a mid-major school to a major one. When Pelphrey was at South Alabama, he got quality athletes, but not on the same caliber as what Horn was doing at WKU. Pelphrey has been at Arkansas for over a calendar year now, and he has done a great job at Arkansas, locking up Michael Sanchez, Rotnei Clarke and Courtney Fortson, all of whom were considering Kentucky at one point. John was an assistant to Billy Donovan for ages, so he knows how to close the deal on recruits, and while Arkansas will probably struggle this year, this might be the last year they struggle for quite a while.

4. Bruce Pearl (Tennessee)

I hope Tennessee fans come on here and accuse me of blasphemy like they do on TCP when somebody even suggests that Bruce Pearl isn’t the very best in the world at most things. I don’t care. Bruce Pearl is a very good recruiter, and he is 0-1 against Billy Gillispie for recruits where both parties showed marked interest (I don’t count Scotty Hopson or Bobby Maze because I’m not sure UK was as interested in those two as people were led to believe). Also, Tennessee fans (especially the citizens of Mason County) were so convinced that Pearl recruited Chris Lofton that they held a ceremony for him in downtown Maysville, painted the town orange and named him an honorary Kentucky Colonel. If you’re familiar with my work, you know that I think this is the worst thing to ever happen in the world. Bruce has done very well, though, especially in picking up transfers.

3. Rick Stansbury (Mississippi State)

I’ll be blunt here: Nobody knows how to cheat and not get caught better than Rick Stansbury. I haven’t been to Starkville, MS, but from what I’ve been told, there’s a Kroger, a Pizza Hut, a couple of stoplights and an SEC university. The basketball team has next to no tradition, yet Stansbury has pulled in some unbelevable classes, mainly by using the AAU circuits, which are ruining the game. In the original recruiting ploy to secure a commitment from Scotty Hopson, I’m pretty sure that Stansbury signed several of his AAU teammates. Some call it conquering the recruiting machine, I call it shady, but except for the Hopson situation, it’s worked to perfection for State.

2. Billy Gillispie (Kentucky)

Really, this is more like 1A. In the first month of his tenure, Coach Gillispie took Patrick Patterson from the vile clutches of Duke and Florida. Then he swooped in and stole DeAndre Liggins from Kansas and Memphis. The
n he took on Bruce Pearl one-on-one for the services of Darius Miller and emerged victorious. Many more recruiting triumphs followed. I don’t need to run down the list. A new player emerges on the radar seemingly every other day. I think Billy Gillispie is the hardest working recruiter in college basketball, and after a couple of years, he’ll surely be at the top of this list. But for now, this guy gets to remain on top of the list.

1. Billy Donovan (Florida)

It’s just too hard to argue against Billy Donovan being the best recruiter in the SEC. Other than Roy Williams and maybe Leonard Hamilton, I think he may very well be the best recruiter in the nation. I’m not sure anybody is better at closing the deal on a guy, and he has been able to pick up guys from South Dakota (Mike Miller), New Hampshire (Matt Bonner), Dominican Republic (Al Horford) and even Denmark (Christian Drejer). He gets guys who fit his style, as demonstrated by his 2004 class that won consecutive titles. Since those guys left, all he’s done is reload (at least according to ranking, though I think this year’s class and last year’s class were both a tad overrated). I can’t imagine him doing anything less, unless he wants to be an NBA coach for another week.

There’s the list. Come back tomorrow for the X’s and O’s part.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, while I’m still reeling from what DLJ said at media day, that’s okay because Cosmo says it’s natural.

This is a tough period for people like the staff at UK Wildcat Country. Nothing is happening – absolutely nothing. So in turn, I can’t write a long column on one subject, and I don’t like doing a WGCGA on consecutive days. I still have some information and opinions, but they’re all pretty short takes, so I’ll just post them all, Larry King style.

WHERE’S MARK COURY?

I’m not sure. If you believe what was said at yesterday’s press conference, then he isn’t here, at least not right now. I had a source tell me a couple weeks ago that Mark Coury had not only transferred, but the transfer occurred less than a month after the season ended. I was reluctant to post this information because it was the only source I had, and the last time I got information from that source, he told me Chris Singleton was coming to Kentucky on the same day he committed to Florida State. Turns out he may have been right after all. If I interpreted the press conference correctly, Coury is not in Lexington, but he might be by the time the season starts.

I always try to be as respectful as possible when talking about the players because every one of them is more deserving of wearing that jersey than I am. I can understand why Mark Coury started so many games and why he played so many minutes in December. Perry Stevenson didn’t find himself until January, and even when that happened, he preferred coming off the bench because he could get a feel for how the officials were going to call the game. Still, I wish it didn’t have to come to that, because Kentucky was usually in a bit of a hole by the time Mark Coury came out of the game at the first TV timeout. Sometimes he was responsible, other times it wasn’t, but it still happened. Without Coury, maybe we can see more minutes from Stevenson, plus extra minutes for Darius Miller, AJ Stewart and Josh Harrellson. If he comes back, he can do what he did last season – do everything his coach tells him in practice, except this time there will be more depth at his position. I say it’s a win-win situation.

AN UPDATE ON LIGGINS AND GALLOWAY

Things are looking better, especially compared to the pessimism apex that was last Friday. Remember last Friday? It seemed like both of Coach Gillispie’s 2008 point guard prospects were not going to get to play at all. Didn’t you get depressed? I know I did. No offense to Michael Porter or Jodie Meeks, but neither of them can be a point guard on a team that can optimize its potential. My man Dave Kersey seems to have a good grasp of the situation. I’m paraphrasing here, but he says that UK feels that DeAndre Liggins has met all eligibilty requirements for the University, and everybody’s just waiting on the NCAA clearinghouse. UK and the clearinghouse have sent paperwork to each other a couple of times, so the staff must be extremely confident in the chances of Liggins suiting up this year. The Kevin Galloway situation is even better, as Dave has called his likelihood of playing in the blue and white “a slam dunk.” This was to be expected when it came out that the Galloway situation was more of a Kentucky problem than an NCAA problem. Does that make you feel better? It should.

KNOW YOUR ROLE, SEC COACHES: A MINI-SHOOT

The views I’m about to express are my own, blah blah, etc. etc., you know how it goes. Here are two quotes from the SEC teleconference that have really started to grind my gears. Both quotes concern the commitment of Austin Rivers to Florida and the horrible double standard that has established. First up is South Carolina’s Darrin Horn.

“In Florida’s case, for example, that’s obviously a unique circumstance where there’s a great relationship there. It’s been built over time, and that kid’s been watched and evaluated. To me, that’s a very careful, wise thing versus something that’s very flippant and off the cuff, which I think is what the intent of that suggestion is.”

Now, here’s Billy Donovan.

“We have not done that (offer a young player based solely on potential, the main thing the NCAA wanted to get rid of with the “Billy Gillispie Rule”). Our situation is much more based upon what we feel is in the best interest of the young man and the University of Florida by way of (building) relationships.”

It is what it is, guys. Florida received a commitment from a freshman in high school, just like Kentucky did. The situations aren’t different. Nothing makes one situation okay and the other one bad. Donovan might be deserving of a pass because of the two national titles, but Darrin Horn? This isn’t the Sun Belt, Skippy. You actually have to run plays to win, unless you’re playing Tennessee. Trent Johnson’s new to the conference, and he didn’t say anything. You know why? Because he’s new to the conference – that’s why. I value the opinion of Mark Gottfried more than that of Darrin Horn, and Gottfried is one of the five worst coaches in the country, but at least he’s been around long enough to know that either both situations are okay, or they both aren’t.

I’m Seth Stogsdill, and I’d love some news.