<p>I am not blaming Skinner, he does the best he can with what we have..we dont have the resources the rest of the ACC has, we have more stringent academic standards, and we are in a bad location for recruiting. All I was saying was that in terms of talent, Dudley is just not that great. I would rather have all of the players I listed on my team than Dudley..perhaps thats why the only other schools that recruited him were SDSU and Creighton..it was his dream to go to Oregon but they didnt want him. Skinner is a great developer of players...imagine what he could do at a school where it was easier to recruit.</p>
<p>Ckmets,</p>
<p>Sorry, I disagree that BC is in a bad place to recruit. Further, many other schools have stringent academic standards, i.e. Duke (ACC also), ND, Stanford, Wake Forest (ACC) etc. Skinner and BC do not subscribe to the rent a player mentality. That is true across the board for the athletic program.</p>
<p>Boston is a great place to go to school. Imagine, within a 20 minute drive you have 5 of the top 35 universities according to USNews. That is the strength of BC and all the other universities in the area. BC's specialty in the region is its focus on being a Catholic school with a history of service while maintaining high academic standards.</p>
<p>Its a great place to recruit people ACADEMICALLY not for athletics however. If you are from around here, you know that the high school sports, other than hockey, are not very strong (lax where I am from, but not so much up here). It is tough to get people to come out of other areas of the country to come to new england when we are talking about athletes here. For the most part, they want to play where a lot of people care about college sports..Boston is not this place. Sure people care about the Beanpot, but that is 2 days of caring, and its not even most people. Boston is a pro sports town. I agree, it is a great place to go to school because of the fact that there are so many top schools around, but a basketball recruit is not going to care about this. </p>
<p>As far as academic standards..ill agree Wake, Stanford, and Notre Dame have high standards, arguably higher than BC's, but how many conference titles in basketball have these schools won? Wake's basketball program has been based on 2 recruits in the last 15 years, Tim Duncan and CP3. Stanford is always decent, but never great except for that 1 year when they were a 1 seed (2004 i think?), and Notre Dame is basically the same but worse. As for Duke, you cannot argue that Duke holds their players to these same standards. I really do know for a fact, from someone who has been involved at both Duke and BC, that BC holds basketball players to higher academic standards than Duke does. Dont get me wrong, I love Duke, I have been a Duke fan my whole life and I still am one, and I applied there ED, but they have loosened the academic standards in favor of keeping the program where it is, which in the long term is better for the school.</p>
<p>ckmets,</p>
<p>Again, unfortunately I disagree. Your argument sounds like the argument made by the commentators on ESPN before ND hired Charlie Weis. ND's time has passed, no one wants to go to school out in the middle of a corn field, etc. Yet Urban Meyer was the coach at Utah, not a well known football power, and Boise State was playing well in the WAC. It made no sense to me.</p>
<p>To me it is much easier to recruit an athlete to play football, basketball or whatever sport to Boston over Boise or Utah. Further, playing in the ACC provides major exposure nationally and is a premier athletic conference. More importantly to the admissions office, playing in the ACC provides exposure outside the region, particularly in the south where the high school demographics are different than the northeast.</p>
<p>Sure the student body could be more enthusiastic like ND football or Duke basketball. What do you think the level of enthusiasm is for other sports at those schools? Before this year ND had gone to the NCAA hockey tournament once or twice and the Duke football team . . . nothing more needs to be said.</p>
<p>Competing for a spot in the top 20 in football, basketball (male and female) and many other sports without compromising the academic standards of the university is quite a feat and one in which the university should be proud. I leave it to you to see what you can do to help the student body get the enthusiasm up . . . it is a long process and something that did not happen overnight for the Duke basketball or ND football teams.</p>
<p>The best record in NCAA post season college hockey over the last 10 years is not a bad start. Hope you will be in St. Louis.</p>
<p>thats because hockey players WANT to come to BC, they WANT to play in Boston. Anyone from New England that ever picked up a hockey stick pretty much wants to play for BC or BU..it is not like that in football. You mention Utah and BSU, all you have to do is look at the rosters to see where the players are from and your question is answered. Very few if any of these players would ever consider BC. Boston is a different country as far as these players are concerned, and one that they would never consider living in for four years of their life. About Notre Dame being in a cornfield, people still want to go to Notre Dame because of their football tradition (and in some cases even because of its academic prestige). We do not have football tradition (somewhat, 1940 national champs but all you have to do is look at who was coaching that team and there is another ND endorsement). Unless you are a hardcore college football fan, you wouldnt know that our best football coach ever actually coached at our school at all. That isnt a good sign for the prestige of the program. Also, people want to go to ND because people care about the team there. They know they will be supported by the students and alumni even if they go 0-12. If BC went 0-12, we would have to give away tickets to get 10000 people in the stands, considering the students are there only to get drunk and regular season tickets now require $1000 donations. Recruits from traditional HS football powerhouse states could not care less about Boston..they want to play for a prestigious program where they will be be noticed by the students and local media. Name me a successful college football program in the northeast over time? PSU doesnt count.</p>
<p>Actually, ckmets13, your statement about the required $1,000 donation is not entirely correct. I'm not sure of the exact percent and I can't find the letter that was sent to my husband, but less than 25% of season ticket holders were required to make that donation amount for their season ticket. We have tickets in a less desirable section of the stadium (a section that we love) and we did not need to make that donation when we renewed our tickets.</p>
<p>Ckmets, we are actually way off the original topic but I have trouble following your logic.</p>
<p>So let me get this straight, hockey players that want to go to BC is a bad thing . . . just like football players that want to go to ND or USC? Or basketball players that want to go to Duke? </p>
<p>It seems to me that you are focused on two sports, men's basketball and football. If you expand that to hockey you have the same thing with BC as you have with ND in football and Duke in basketball. But hockey is not the sport you are most interested in. Further, examining the basketball roster shows that there are students outside New England that will come to play in Boston, i.e. Tyrese Rice and Jared Dudley. In fact there is only one student on the men's team from New England.</p>
<p>Check this link:</p>
<p>4 of the top 150 are listed as going to BC, though one is from New England.</p>
<p>Sorry for the interuption, now back to the topic at hand, what is BC good at. From those I know who have gone there it is the service aspect of the school, the highly rated sports program and well rounded academics that they like.</p>
<p>I care about every sport. We have the #3 recruiting class this year in womens soccer, but thats because there are places where good womens soccer is played in the northeast (ie long island, as our best recruit last year is from Massapequa). When did I ever say hockey players wanting to go to BC is a bad thing? I just said its the same thing as basketball players wanting to go to Duke/UNC or football players to USC/ND. Of course I am interested in hockey, when did I ever say I wasnt, but we were originally talking about basketball. Jared Dudley came to BC because we were the only major conference school that offered him. Tyrese did have an offer from Wake, but he was only a 2 star player anyway so its not like he was a big time recruit by any means. I maintain we cannot recruit nationally like most of the other ACC programs..when was the last time BC landed a 5 star recruit?</p>
<p>SAILING!!!!</p>
<p>BC has consistantly been nationally ranked as a top 5 sailing team for years! BC is unquestionably the most desirable team to sail for on the East coast.</p>
<p>sailing is a huge spectator sport...</p>
<p>ckmets,</p>
<p>And there are many McDonalds All Americans that Dudley has outperformed. Unless you are Greg Oden those ratings do not mean a whole lot.</p>
<p>Note the article today's Boston Globe about Billy Donovan and the Florida basketball team. First, they did not sell out their arena every night. Second, he was asked how in the world he was going to compete in the SEC with recruits like Noah and Horford. Ironically the article was written by Bob Ryan, a BC grad and an expert on college basketball.</p>
<p>It is not what level they are when recruited. It is about the team that is produced by those recruits. While you are not happy with the BC basketball team they were clearly a major contender if Sean Williams had stayed. BC was in first place ahead until he left . . . though I still don't understand how in the world they lost to Vermont and Duquense. ;-)</p>
<p>Here is the reference to the article in the Globe:</p>