Offseason? What offseason?
It's hard to believe less than two weeks ago VCU was playing St. Mary's in the NCAA tournament and I was hunting down restaurants in downtown Salt Lake City for a 10PM meal. Yet here we are on March 29, the Final 4 not even tipped up yet and we've got a new coach, re-recruited players and are drooling over the transfer market.
Basketball comes at ya fast. Here's a quick catchup on what has happened while you were away and what's still in the works.
COACHING CHANGE TIMELINE[/HEADING=3]
It's hard to believe less than two weeks ago VCU was playing St. Mary's in the NCAA tournament and I was hunting down restaurants in downtown Salt Lake City for a 10PM meal. Yet here we are on March 29, the Final 4 not even tipped up yet and we've got a new coach, re-recruited players and are drooling over the transfer market.
Basketball comes at ya fast. Here's a quick catchup on what has happened while you were away and what's still in the works.
COACHING CHANGE TIMELINE[/HEADING=3]
March 16 - VCU loses to St. Mary's in first round of NCAA tournament
March 19 - LSU visits Will Wade at Chesterfield airport
March 20 - Wade accepts job at LSU
March 21 - VCU announces they'll hire Mike Rhoades as head coach
March 22 - Mike Rhoades introduced as head coach at press conference
March 24 - Sean Mobley becomes first VCU recruit to recommit to Rams under Rhoades
March 26 - Marcus Santos-Silve joins Mobley in recommitting to VCU
COACHING STAFF UPDATE[/HEADING=3]
Here are the names we know as reported by ESPN's Jeff Goodman...
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">New VCU coach Mike Rhoades' staff is as follows: J.D. Byers, Brent Scott, Jimmy Martelli as DOBO, Joey Rodriquez as player development.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/GoodmanESPN/status/847074692276113409">March 29, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Head Coach - Mike Rhoades
Assistant - J.D. Byers
Assistant - Brent Scott
Assistant - TBD
Dir. of Operations - Jimmy Martelli
Dir. of Player Development - Joey Rodriguez
Dir. of Student-Athlete Development - TBD
Dir. of Video & Basketball Operations - TBD
Dir. of Sports Performance - Don Brown
A couple of names to watch for a few of those positions: first, keep an eye on Jeremy Ballard (former VCU assistant, current Pitt assistant) as a potential target for that final assistant coach slot. The Director of Student-Athlete Development is currently Darius Theus who may return in that role but could also accept a potential position at the University of Texas (or so I'm told).
TRANSFER NAMES TO WATCH[/HEADING=3]
[caption id="attachment_20877" align="alignright" width="300"]<a href="https://www.vcuramnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/B7P7ui-IYAAbLU7.jpg"><img class="wp-image-20877 size-medium" src="https://www.vcuramnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/B7P7ui-IYAAbLU7-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" /></a> Rice transfer Marcus Evans, a Chesapeake native, averaged 21.4 points as a freshman and 19 as a sophomore and could potentially follow Rhoades from Rice to VCU.[/caption]
VCU recruited four players under Will Wade for the 2017 class, two of which re-committed to play for Mike Rhoades. That leaves Lavar Batts and Mayan Kiir as the other half of the class yet to re-commit to stay at VCU and one additional spot former head coach Will Wade left open for a potential immediate impact grad transfer. Rhoades and Co. could opt for a grad transfer as well but a name to watch for with that final spot is available Rice transfer, Marcus Evans. Evans is a Chesapeake product Rhoades recruited to Rice in his first class. The 6'2 guard averaged 21.4 points as a freshman and 19 as a sophomore. Following VCU's hiring of Rhoades from Rice, Evans announced his intention to transfer and since doing so has received offers from a who's who of college hoops teams. Don't be surprised however if the Cape Henry grad follows Rhoades to VCU and continues a string of what have been incredible 757 guard talents (Walker, Theus, Weber).
WILL WADE ON LEAVING VCU[/HEADING=3]
Former Rams head coach Will Wade did a <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_ba924104-13f3-11e7-af7b-7f9e401d4c53.html">recent interview with TheAdvocate.com </a>where he went over a number of things but most importantly for our readers his timeline of his departure, how he told his players, etc.
"They asked me Monday night; they didn’t ask me Sunday when they came up and met with me. They had to go back; you know, there’s a lot of politics where you have to run things up the food chain, on Monday. I was actually on the phone with a recruit when Joe called. I put the recruit on hold and told Joe I was on the line with an important recruit and that I'd call him back. I didn't know what it was, so when I called Joe back, he said, "Well, is this recruit going to play at LSU?" That was kind of how we started.
I wanted to talk to my wife (Lauren) about it to make sure she was OK with everything, and we went from there. It was pretty quick after that. I had to get over to our players’ apartments and get with the guys, but sometimes you can't stop what happens on Twitter. Some people found out about three minutes before I made it to our players, which was disappointing, but that's the way it goes sometimes."
[/HEADING=3]
[/HEADING=3]
Here are the names we know as reported by ESPN's Jeff Goodman...
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">New VCU coach Mike Rhoades' staff is as follows: J.D. Byers, Brent Scott, Jimmy Martelli as DOBO, Joey Rodriquez as player development.
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanESPN) <a href="https://twitter.com/GoodmanESPN/status/847074692276113409">March 29, 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Head Coach - Mike Rhoades
Assistant - J.D. Byers
Assistant - Brent Scott
Assistant - TBD
Dir. of Operations - Jimmy Martelli
Dir. of Player Development - Joey Rodriguez
Dir. of Student-Athlete Development - TBD
Dir. of Video & Basketball Operations - TBD
Dir. of Sports Performance - Don Brown
A couple of names to watch for a few of those positions: first, keep an eye on Jeremy Ballard (former VCU assistant, current Pitt assistant) as a potential target for that final assistant coach slot. The Director of Student-Athlete Development is currently Darius Theus who may return in that role but could also accept a potential position at the University of Texas (or so I'm told).
TRANSFER NAMES TO WATCH[/HEADING=3]
[caption id="attachment_20877" align="alignright" width="300"]<a href="https://www.vcuramnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/B7P7ui-IYAAbLU7.jpg"><img class="wp-image-20877 size-medium" src="https://www.vcuramnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/B7P7ui-IYAAbLU7-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" /></a> Rice transfer Marcus Evans, a Chesapeake native, averaged 21.4 points as a freshman and 19 as a sophomore and could potentially follow Rhoades from Rice to VCU.[/caption]
VCU recruited four players under Will Wade for the 2017 class, two of which re-committed to play for Mike Rhoades. That leaves Lavar Batts and Mayan Kiir as the other half of the class yet to re-commit to stay at VCU and one additional spot former head coach Will Wade left open for a potential immediate impact grad transfer. Rhoades and Co. could opt for a grad transfer as well but a name to watch for with that final spot is available Rice transfer, Marcus Evans. Evans is a Chesapeake product Rhoades recruited to Rice in his first class. The 6'2 guard averaged 21.4 points as a freshman and 19 as a sophomore. Following VCU's hiring of Rhoades from Rice, Evans announced his intention to transfer and since doing so has received offers from a who's who of college hoops teams. Don't be surprised however if the Cape Henry grad follows Rhoades to VCU and continues a string of what have been incredible 757 guard talents (Walker, Theus, Weber).
WILL WADE ON LEAVING VCU[/HEADING=3]
Former Rams head coach Will Wade did a <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_ba924104-13f3-11e7-af7b-7f9e401d4c53.html">recent interview with TheAdvocate.com </a>where he went over a number of things but most importantly for our readers his timeline of his departure, how he told his players, etc.
"They asked me Monday night; they didn’t ask me Sunday when they came up and met with me. They had to go back; you know, there’s a lot of politics where you have to run things up the food chain, on Monday. I was actually on the phone with a recruit when Joe called. I put the recruit on hold and told Joe I was on the line with an important recruit and that I'd call him back. I didn't know what it was, so when I called Joe back, he said, "Well, is this recruit going to play at LSU?" That was kind of how we started.
I wanted to talk to my wife (Lauren) about it to make sure she was OK with everything, and we went from there. It was pretty quick after that. I had to get over to our players’ apartments and get with the guys, but sometimes you can't stop what happens on Twitter. Some people found out about three minutes before I made it to our players, which was disappointing, but that's the way it goes sometimes."
[/HEADING=3]
[/HEADING=3]
Former Rams head coach Will Wade did a <a href="http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/sports/lsu/article_ba924104-13f3-11e7-af7b-7f9e401d4c53.html">recent interview with TheAdvocate.com </a>where he went over a number of things but most importantly for our readers his timeline of his departure, how he told his players, etc.
"They asked me Monday night; they didn’t ask me Sunday when they came up and met with me. They had to go back; you know, there’s a lot of politics where you have to run things up the food chain, on Monday. I was actually on the phone with a recruit when Joe called. I put the recruit on hold and told Joe I was on the line with an important recruit and that I'd call him back. I didn't know what it was, so when I called Joe back, he said, "Well, is this recruit going to play at LSU?" That was kind of how we started.
I wanted to talk to my wife (Lauren) about it to make sure she was OK with everything, and we went from there. It was pretty quick after that. I had to get over to our players’ apartments and get with the guys, but sometimes you can't stop what happens on Twitter. Some people found out about three minutes before I made it to our players, which was disappointing, but that's the way it goes sometimes."
