Early Dunk City commitment kicks off Joe Dooley era at FGCU Kitsap Sun

That may sound strange considering he was hired Nike Free Run+ 5.0 back in mid April. It's that for most of the past 12 weeks Dooley has been largely dealing with the past.

The 47 year old inherited nearly a full staff, all his players and even the two incoming recruits. What changes he made were subtle albeit noticeable. A recent one hour workout for example was more up tempo than anything I had witnessed the last two years under Enfield.

Dooley established credibility merely by showing up. When former Kansas standouts Cole Aldrich and Sherron Collins stopped by Alico Arena recently to work out with their former assistant coach, what sort of statement do you think that sent to the returning players? They know for all that they accomplished last March, none of them were as good in college as Aldrich and Collins. If those guys hold Coach Dooley in that high regard, then it's natural for the Eagles players to conclude, "Hey, we got ourselves a good one." How good and what direction he takes FGCU, we are beginning to find out.

Next to March, the most important month of the college basketball season is July. Recruiting is the lifeblood of the sport and you find your next group of players in the dead of summer. Most of this month Dooley and his staff are all over the country at dozens of elite player camps. This is what the NCAA calls "live evaluation periods" (July 10 14, 17 21, 24 2 . After a decade of going after 4 and 5 star players for Kansas, Dooley finds himself at a 2 or 3 star school.

Will he make the Eagles into a 3 to 4 star school?

Dooley hit the road by adding a new assistant coach. Jamill Jones joins assistants Marty Richter and Michael Fly on the recruiting trail, having spent the last year with Team Takeover (DC) in the NIKE Elite Youth League.

FGCU will lose only one player (Chase Fieler) in a year and has transfers from Tulane (Marc Eddy Norelia) and Rice (Julian DeBose) waiting in the wings for the 2014 15 season. That means Dooley's roster is largely set for the next two years. How does he handle what is both a luxury and a curse?

We already got the answer. The first recruit is a symbol and a statement. Enfield's first recruit was flashy point guard Brett Comer. Dooley's Nike Free Dam first commit is Christian Terrell, a 6 foot 4 guard from Jacksonville whose athleticism and dunking ability has already land him on ESPN's SportsCenter and ABC's Good Morning America.

We'll have to wait a year for Nike Roshe Run Dam Terrell's arrival, but the fact he will call FGCU home is a testament to Dooley. Normally a coaching change costs a school a prized recruit. Enfield and his staff may have been the first to recruit Terrell but the reason he told Miami and Florida State "don't bother" is because the new sheriff in town convinced him the best at FGCU is yet to come.

Posted by: sfrtewdfwf50 at 06:07 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 538 words, total size 3 kb.