Correct, sir. And since that time, Neville has been strictly 4A, and so has Bastrop. Ouachita and Ruston both bounced back and forth from 4A to 5A. Both schools have enrollments near 1,250. West Monroe's enrollment is over 1,900.
I've been told that Ouachita's initial move was a "best interest" decision following the 2005 and 2006 seasons when the two teams met three or four times and nearly came to blows on two of those occasions. The blood was so bad that the belief was the two teams could not co-exist so with Ouachita being right on the cusp of qualifying for 5A, the move was made. That was around the time Bastrop was fighting the mountain of troubles for the Port Sulphur kids. At that time the rumor was Ouachita was the whistleblower because an ousted Bastrop coach was now on the Ouachita staff, but it ended up being Ruston...who were only upset because Bastrop beat them to the punch on those kids, LOL.
Asig, what is your take on what transpired with Cam Robinson? Both regarding the move to another school and our recruitment and whether we botched it or simply had no chance from jump.
Cam Robinson had 2 main handlers during his recruitment. Bakari Guice who was suspended and WM was fined because rules were broken when Guice rode to Bama with Cam. The other is Shawn King who played at LSU but was dismissed (I believe he was dismissed after a fight with Shaq and/or grades). Both really pushed the Bama angle and at one point Cam's mom wanted to put a stop to the pressure. She accomplished this but for a very short amount of time. There are a ton of pictures with those 2 and another uncle sporting Bama gear from when they took Cam on multiple visits to Bama during the summer.
I looked up Shawn King on wiki, it says he ended up at UL-M right around the Curly Hallman era. I assume that's the same person you are talking about. On 247sports, somebody mentioned Keldrick King, is that a mistake? Or is that yet a 3rd person involved? The other uncle? Anytime I hear the word "handlers" it never means anything good. I hope Bakari Guice isn't related to Derrius Guice, 2015 prospect.
From what I gather the foot was in the door but we never really had a chance to get comfortable. I would place some blame at the feet of Stud, but more so in terms of development rather than the actual recruitment. I don't think it would've mattered who recruited him. He was as good as gone. According to my friend, us not seriously pursuing Sims didn't help but it probably wouldn't have truly mattered. Those two were probably leaving. The guys who were "handling" them have spread the idea that LSU is not developing its talent. I've mentioned before about my night at BWW in West Monroe the night Silva lost that first Wiedeman (sp?) fight. My buddy said the same thing but I questioned him on how he could say that when so many LSU guys were in the league. He said maybe so, but a lot of these kids were under the impression that Alabama was doing a better job "coaching them up." Never mind Mingo and Reid had just gone in the 1st round. And you can't tell me Claiborne wasn't coached up. I asked him about a number of La. recruits and he was dead on. He's no fan but apparently Coach Frank is his boy and he felt Speedy was going to do something messed up and he did. Loyalty means something and people won't forget this. Said Gerald was caught up. He wouldn't go to Bama because of mom but he wouldn't go to LSU because of Bro. He felt sorry for him because he felt his family was taking his decision from him. If he took ownership, he'd probably be at LSU. He'll need to fix that going forward. He also said someone else needed to take over recruiting North La because Saban was taking over up there. 2016 is not a good year to miss up there. Especially in Bastrop. It's perfectly fine to lose recruits. But not to one school and especially not THAT school. I agree with him. If it were just about recruiting it would be one thing, but there is specific intent on the part of the dwarf. I said it before and folks thought I was BSing, but of all the places to talk about recruiting "among the boys," the dwarf specifically pointed out ownership of Louisiana as his ultimate goal. He is going to offer everyone, even if we don't. He's going to pursue everyone, even if we don't seriously (guys like Sims, Devall, Sylve, etc,). And it's not because he wants them per se. But if it means they can spread the word that we didn't want a guy like Sims then it's worth it to him. And Sims to my surprise has gotten MUCH better. But we put his importance below guys like Quinn, Speedy, and Dupre. In a sense, Speedy screwed us with Sims. At the same time, if my friend knows these things just from talking to his buddies in the coaching community through camps, why didn't we? Sorry for the length. There's a lot more that could be said from that one conversation but some of it is damn near inflammatory. Recruiting is almost as dirty a business as politics...
Like it or not negative recruiting is HUGE!!!! Miles better get on top of it or an unscrupulous prick like saban will eat him alive.
