by Aargh » September 23rd, 2014, 11:45 pm
The recruitment of Roach is interesting. Texas has a couple of future NBA guys in their backcourt and has a commitment from a player very much like Roach. Cotton is graduating. Baker is a redshirt Jr., likely to have his degree in hand this spring, and a projected 1st round draft pick. WSU holds the playing time card.
Texas is thought to be the leader, and they are putting about 100% of their recruiting effort into maintaining that position.
Roach is a serious student and wants to go into Computer Engineering. WSU has recently beefed up their Computer Science department into a respectable program and has had an outstanding engineering program for 60 years, thanks to the local aircraft industry.
WSU is undergoing about a $300 mill upgrade that will convert an on-campus golf course into an Innovation Campus focusing on combining technology with engineering. This is being done with mostly private funding and will have on-campus businesses working with students in engineering, technology, and business to prepare those students for their future careers, instead of just giving them the typical academic education.
I'm skeptical that we get Roach, but we are in a position to go head-to-toe with Texas for a top-40 player out of Texas and we can compete on educational opportunity as well as our basketball program.
VanVleet might be able to deliver Roach. VanVleet is a very special person. Probably every non-thug, non gangsta-wanna-be, HS PG wants to be Fred VanVleet. What he's done for himself, his school, his community, and the players around him is something I've never seen from a player in the 50+ years I've been following college basketball. To say that Fred is intense and focused is like saying the sun is bright. A recruit who sees that and likes it is unlikely to find anything similar anywhere else.