Eloy Vargas to the University of Florida

Late last night (Wednesday) Eloy Vargas sent me a text and said simply "I'm a Gator!". I congratulated him and we exchanged a couple more text messages, and then I went to sleep knowing that Eloy will enroll at UF in 2008. I am happy for Eloy in many ways - I know how hard Eloy has worked to improve his game, and I know how hard he has worked academically to get himself in a good position. I congratulate his family, his AAU coaches, his teachers, his teammates, and most of all, himself. Eloy now can concentrate on his academics and school basketball, as he another goal left to achieve - the McDonald's All American Game.
Now Eloy could not have made a bad choice when it came to his college choices. Every school recruiting him was a good option, and every coach recruiting him is a good coach. I don't think Eloy could have gone wrong. In the end, Eloy has to know in his heart that he made the right choice, and, as Eloy told me last night - he really believes he is going to the best place for him.
Eloy my man - from 1 Gator to another - CONGRATULATIONS.

Leadership

Look - the talent here is good. With good leadership (and not just from our best players), we can do really great things this season. But, unfortunately the alternative rings true, too. With poor leadership we will be just another talented team that fails to reach their potential.
Dictionary.com defines leadership as: "an act or instance of leading; guidance; direction". I bring this up today because I believe that as our season draws closer (our first practice day is October 29th) it is becoming more and more evident to me that we will have a lot of talent on the team, but I am really unsure at this point about how much leadership we will have. We have 3 seniors that return on this team, but I ask the question daily - Are seniors automatic leaders? Do they deserve the label "leaders" because they are in their 4th year of high school?
After being around this group of guys for the first 5 weeks of school, I would say that right now we do not have very good senior leadership. We have great players who are seniors, and all of those kids are GREAT kids. I just want them to be great leaders, too.
I believe in the power of players leading players, and I believe that younger players will always be influenced by older players - both in the positive and negative direction.

Oh What a Week!

Tonight marked the end of the first week that the college coaches have been allowed out to visit students on campus. In the last 7 days, we have seen 34 division 1 college coaches come down to visit. I love every minute of the fact that these guys want to come down to see our guys, and be seen by our guys. From Billy Donovan to Thad Matta, from Mike Krzyzewski to Jamie Dixon, from Leonard Hamilton to Dennis Felton, from Frank Haith to Cesar Odio, to the other 27 assistant coaches who have been on campus, I thank you for visiting our school and program. You came to see our guys (Eloy Vargas, Kenny Boynton, Raymond Taylor, Jacob Wheeler, Everton Chin, Brett Buzzard, Bill Slade, Jordan Katz, Justin Day) and I am confident that they played hard and with good energy, although we could always play better defense!

We concluded our week with an hour long open gym tonight, and, it was fun to watch. I love seeing the talent, effort and speed in the gym come to life on the basketball court. I love seeing the guys make the extra pass, find their teammates for good shots, and cheer for them when they hit the shot. It was a great night for Heritage Hoops tonight, and it has been a great week for the program.

Scholarships, Scholarships, Scholarships

My number one goal is to see our players move on to play basketball at the next level. I feel that this is the top priority in our program. I believe that the goal of getting our players an opportunity to play in college supersedes everything - including winning. My main reason for having this job is the satisfaction that it brings me when our guys move on.
Last night was one of the nights that jump starts us toward that goal. We had a workout in our gym that was attended by 27 division 1 coaches, and 1 division 2 coach (Thanks to Coach Odio from Barry University for coming). The division 1 coaches came for a variety of reasons. Some came to see certain players (Duquesne came to see Ray Taylor, for example), while others came to see all the players (Clemson was here for that reason, for example). Whatever the reason, I was happy to see the coaches in the gym. That credit entirely goes out to our players, who are talented enough to bring the coaches out, and who work hard at their game to get better and better. My thanks go out to all the coaches that flew in for the workout, and to all the players for playing hard and being unselfish last night. I can't wait to do it again.