Tigers pick the junior-college way to restock roster after transfers
Kelvin Sampson had no inkling of the storm Tubby Smith was about to endure when the two ran into each other at the National Junior College Athletic Association championships last month. The Houston coach did not know if the Lawson brothers were returning, nor did he really care, because Smith is more than just the Memphis men’s basketball coach to him. Their relationship dates back 40 years, to when Sampson was a student teacher at a junior high school and Smith served as the head basketball coach at a high school down the road in Raeford, N.C., and conversation between them tends not to be about recruiting. So why each had made the trek to Hutchinson, Kan., quickly became an afterthought. Sampson laughs at the memory three weeks later, now well aware of what his longtime friend was up to.
“Tubby can win with whoever he has. That’s how much confidence I have in that man,” Sampson said. “People say, ‘Well, they went to junior college. There has to be something wrong with them.’ That’s just a myth. I think sometimes junior colleges get a bad rap because of perception. I’ve never understood the problem.”
Smith’s immediate future at Memphis is now tied to that notion. Over a 28-day span once his first season with the Tigers ended with a 30-point loss to Central Florida in the American Athletic Conference quarterfinals, six players announced their plans to transfer from Memphis. Only two scholarship players will return from a team that posted a 1913 record.
In search of reinforcements to counter a tumultuous offseason, Smith and his staff hope a group of junior-college transfers can steady the program.
With the commitment of forward Raynere Thornton on Saturday morning, Memphis will have at least four former junior-college stars on scholarship next season.
Two of them (guard Kareem Brewton and forward Kyvon Davenport) were named first team junior college All-Americans this past week, and another (guard Chris Darrington) is considering joining them. Memphis is also pursuing 7-foot Nigerian prospect Usman Haruna of Bismarck State College.
On the surface, going this route in college basketball is not unusual. There were 33 teams in this year’s NCAA tournament field that featured at least one player who began his career at the junior-college level, and 31 of those players averaged at least 20 minutes per game. Within the AAC, Houston had six players recruited from a junior college on its roster and qualified for the National Invitation Tournament this past season under Sampson.
But the flip side is that just six NCAA tournament teams this year had four or more junior-college players on their rosters, and none came from a high major conference. Over the past three years, only 12 of the 30 first team junior college All-Americans have immediately averaged double figures in scoring at the Division I level.
“JUCO guys are an instant relief,” said Brendan Walker, the national director of junior-college scouting and recruiting for Elite Basketball Services. “The guys Memphis is getting, who they’re recruiting, have all played at really high levels for two years. Not to say they’re going to average 15 points a game, but you know what those guys are going to bring every day and you know they can play at that level.
“I’m not saying if they get all the junior-college players, they’re going to win the conference. But they should stay competitive. The junior college kids get you through a year without really taking a hit and they have an easy sell (with) them needing guys to play right away.”
Junior colleges used to routinely produce Division I stars, with players such as Jimmy Butler, Steve Francis and Shawn Marion among those that have eventually matriculated to NBA stardom. However, the rise in popularity of prep schools around the country in recent years offered another option for players who couldn’t qualify academically out of high school and diluted the junior-college talent pool.
But both Walker and Sampson said junior-college basketball could be on the verge of a renaissance after the NCAA recently changed its eligibility standards. Beginning last August, prospective student-athletes must have a 2.3 grade point average and complete 10 of 16 core courses before their senior year. This, Walker predicts, means “a lot of the pop up preps are going to be disappearing” and junior colleges will once again become a more viable landing spot for top recruits.
“Teams that succeed with junior-college kids have a culture where they hold kids accountable,” added Sampson, who made the Final Four at Oklahoma in 2002 using five junior-college players.
This is what seemed to be missing during Smith’s first season at Memphis, senior Jake McDowell admitted last week, and it’s perhaps at the core of why Smith seemed so publicly confident » March 10: Memphis ends coach Tubby Smith’s first season with an 84-54 loss to Central Florida in the AAC tournament. » March 13: Graduate transfer Chad Rykhoek announces he won’t return to Memphis next season and will seek a sixth year of eligibility elsewhere. » March 19: Sophomore guard Craig Randall announces he is transferring to another school for next season. » March 28: Tubby Smith holds end-of-season news conference in which he stated, “We expect everybody to be back unless we hear something different.” » April 5: Brothers Dedric and K.J. Lawson announce they plan to transfer to another school. » April 6: Junior college guard Kareem Brewton announces his commitment to Memphis while on a campus visit. » April 8: Freshman guard Keon Clergeot announces he won’t return to Memphis next year. » April 9: Junior college forward Kyvon Davenport commits to Memphis. » April 10: Keelon Lawson announces Dedric and K.J. Lawson are headed to Kansas. » April 10: Markel Crawford announces he will seek a graduate transfer at another school. » April 11: Memphis AD Tom Bowen releases statement about men’s basketball transfers. » April 15: Junior college forward Raynere Thornton commits to Memphis in the face of all these recent defections.
In Brewton, Davenport and Thornton, Smith now has a group of players who are sold on him, regardless of the fact that their careers involved a detour to the junior-college ranks.
“It would have been easier if they hadn’t have left, but I still think he can get it done,” McDowell said. “Guys just have to be 100 percent bought in to him and his philosophy and his style of coaching. It goes for any coach that’s trying to fix a program.”