West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Good one.
Dennis at center will give him opportunity to learn to finish at the rim. Lol
Maybe pastor crutch not pleased with basketball skills of non post guys in soph and jr class. Isaac white averages 94% ft, 44% 3s and got 20 pts in win over Boston college his frosh year. Pastor crutch has said in previous homilies that height is not a deal breaker. But 4 guards is surprising. Probably has 1 or 2 slots left.

I'm not surprised at all by Crutch's recruiting class at Nova. Over the years at WLU, it became more than obvious that he didn't particulary care for the size of his players. All they needed to do was shoot the 3, have an extremely high defensive motor and be unselfish with the ball. Think he felt like rebounds wouldn't be an issue if his teams were hitting 45% of their 3's and they were forcing turnovers. On the defensive end, he seemed to be willing to "trade" an inside 2 by the other teams big to get the ball back and make a 3 of his own...he'd trade 2's for 3's all night long!!

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Good one.
Dennis at center will give him opportunity to learn to finish at the rim. Lol
Maybe pastor crutch not pleased with basketball skills of non post guys in soph and jr class. Isaac white averages 94% ft, 44% 3s and got 20 pts in win over Boston college his frosh year. Pastor crutch has said in previous homilies that height is not a deal breaker. But 4 guards is surprising. Probably has 1 or 2 slots left.

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

If there would be a jump it would be bush league D1 so that arena would be more than fine. Most of the 'low end D1' (term used loosely) draw horrible ... couple thousand. Some not even that much. It's not like the Florida Chapter of the Church of Crutch would be joining the ACC. Many of those lower D1 schools would die to even have an arena like the KCAC or Cal's arena.

I have noticed with his recruiting class .... Dennis may be playing power forward or center.

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Could happen I guess. But only 4500 undergrad students (much of enrollment is online and/or graduate work). Endowment is $102M (WLU is 10M)
New arena complex, but I think it is only about 4500 or so I would guess.

[FlyHawk98]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Sounds like nova will be on the map in a year or two

With the size of their enrollment, I wonder if they would consider going D1 if Crutchfield can be successful there (which I think is a no brainer.)

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Any rumors about possible additional signings for WLU?
I know 4 have signed (Moore, Saben, Yoakum, and Ochoa

[Chevydude89]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Sounds like nova will be on the map in a year or two

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Taking a break from beating the wju football dead horse lol.
Crutch signs another 6 ft guard transfer from u mass Lowell. Leading scorer in Ashland Ohio history. 44% 3s as frosh and all conf at mass Lowell. Injured and redshirt last year. If u don't play team d this year, nova will light u up from outside

[IUPbigINDIANS]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Crutch will have a national power by his second season. Perfect storm.

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

OT for hoops news - Nova SE Recruiting
Slow time obviously for me to stoop to posting about another school.

Crutch is loading up on guards in 6-1 to 6-2 range who can shoot lights out.
1. Nick Smith - 2 time fab 5 award in Pittsburgh ( 5 best players in the area) - leading scorer in North hills history 1700 pts

2. Eddie Puisis - POY in tough D1 conference in Ohio Mason ohio.
3. Malik hardy - Hardy filled up the stat sheet as a senior at nearby Pines Charter in Fort Lauderdale, averaging 27 points, seven rebounds and four assists per game en route to becoming a Second Team All-Broward County member in 2016-17. Along with his nomination for Broward County Player of the Year, Hardy was selected to participate in the 23rd Annual TOC Dade vs. Broward Game and the Second Annual HoopMIA All-Star Game


4. David Dennis - Need I say more?

They have a guy who is 6 ft 9 senior who was frosh of yr in Salem International's Conference. This is his second year at Nova - hit 40% of his 3s.

Looks to sign 2 or 3 more players.

Recruiting advantages

Broward county has 1.869 M people (about the size of WV) and is part of the 6.0M Miami metro area.
Also Nova has 1500 foreign students so I would expect overseas connections are in place. They have 2 swedes on the team.


At Nov SE, Recruiting will definitely be easier to get the players (i.e., big men) that are needed to make a deep run in the NCAAs.
Question is how long will it take existing players to buy in to his system and play smart and unselfishly.

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Prez thinks things are going "great" in the athletic department so there is no pressure to improve anything. Programs that are good will continue to be good while these that are bad will continue to be so with no consequences. Here's hoping the soccer and "tumbling" team hired good coaches that put winning programs on the field because there will be no pressure from the AD to win.

[Sportsnut]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Probably be no pressure on Wally to get more than the usual 5 wins now. They were co-AD's the last year or so and their working relation goes back for years.

[boatcapt]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

100% accurate

"Official" notification of Ullom as the AD at WLU:

http://www.theintelligencer.net/spor...%80%88liberty/

Ullom has literally never worked ANYWERE but in the WLU athletic department. Graduated from WLU then went directly to work in the WLU athletic department were he has been for the last 30+ years. He knows ZERO about how other successful universities run their athletic departments. We will have no change...no innovation...no improvement because in Ullom and the Presidents eyes the athletic department and teams are being run just fine.

[Columbuseer]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

He may have been a low post player coming out of HS, but he managed to drain 66 3-pters his freshman yr on the Hilltop, at a 55% clip.

In terms of his style of play at WLU, at the beginning of his jr year, he started backing people down inside and scoring in a variety of ways that I had not seen before at WLU. As you said, prior to that at WLU, he was a wing player primarily.
When he added that dimension, he became a nightmare to guard because he was no longer just an outside threat. He made have had those moves in HS, I don't know, but he emphasized it more beginning in his junior year. He was incredible inside against Lincoln Memorial and some skilled players in his senior year.

[IUP Extra Mile]

Re: West Liberty Hilltopper Basketball

Believe it or not, Bonifant was a low-post player coming out of Hiland.

He may have been a low post player coming out of HS, but he managed to drain 66 3-pters his freshman yr on the Hilltop, at a 55% clip.