Basketball: Haws, teammates get the muzzle
We were hoping to have an update on Tyler Haws, the junior basketball star from Lone Peak High today, but we don't have much to report. If you read our article in Saturday's Salt Lake Tribune about Friday's Brighton-Lone Peak boys basketball game, you know why.
Lone Peak coach Quincy Lewis announced after the game that his players are now off limits to the media, "at least through the end of the regular season." I've got a lot of respect for Lewis, easily one of the state's top prep coaches, but I think this little tactic of his is going to backfire. But that's another story.
I also believe that part of the prep athletic experience -- at least for elite athletes -- is dealing with the media. For many prep players, this will be the only chance in their lives where they will have the opportunity to be interviewed.
I've had many people come up to me over the years (I covered prep sports exclusively for the Tribune for 12 years) and tell me that I once interviewed them after this game or that game. Not that I am a particularly good interviewer, but they always say something like, "I've never forgotten that."
My experience over the years is that high school coaches and teams need the mainstream media a lot more than we need them. There are 122 boys prep basketball teams in the state. We'll just shift our coverage elsewhere.
What hurts this particular blog the most is the fact that the Knights are flat-out loaded with college recruits -- probably more so than any other school in recent memory. Tough to blog about these guys when you can't talk to them.
In fairness, Lewis did provide the cell phone number of Haws' father, Marty, for all recruiting-related questions. The irony that night was that Lewis delivered the "off-limits" news to me, Michael Black of the Deseret News and Beky Beaton of the Provo Daily Herald just minutes after Tyler Haws had given a cable television interview after scoring 29 points in the easy win over Brighton. Either Lewis just came up with it when I asked to speak to Tyler, or Tyler had forgotten the edict when he ran off the court and was grabbed by the TV guys.
Anyway, I did find out a little more about Haws' recruitment from a variety of other sources.
For instance, Haws has offers from Utah, BYU and Pepperdine, as has been reported previously. Utah coach Jim Boylen and athletic director Chris Hill were in attendance Friday, as well as Tim Lacomb, BYU's director of basketball operations.
A good source told me that Stanford, which had coaches in a few weeks ago to watch Lone Peak's game against Bingham, has made it known that it wants Haws, too, through an intermediary. However, the Cardinal has not submitted the offer in writing or anything like that.
There's been some scuttlebutt out there that Utah is recruiting Haws more heavily than BYU.
Not true.
They are dead-even, mostly because NCAA rules restrict the amount of contact that college coaches can have with seniors who have not signed yet, let alone juniors. With juniors, coaches get something like one phone call per month. Suffice it to say that those calls are being used.
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I had a chance to talk to Brighton coach Lyndon Johnson about some of the Bengals' college prospects after the game. Brighton senior Jace Tavita has signed with Utah.
Fellow senior Ali Langford, who had 22 points, is being looked at by all the local junior colleges and some smaller out-of-state schools. The same can be said of 6-foot-1 Abe Millsap, younger brother of Utah Jazz star Paul Millsap.
Of course, the Brighton player everybody will hear a lot about in the future is freshman Corbin Miller. Yes, he's a freshman.
Miller has led the team in scoring two of the past four games and is simply a superstar in the making. If he keeps improving, Miller will be the next big-time recruit in the state, after Haws.
Lone Peak coach Quincy Lewis announced after the game that his players are now off limits to the media, "at least through the end of the regular season." I've got a lot of respect for Lewis, easily one of the state's top prep coaches, but I think this little tactic of his is going to backfire. But that's another story.
I also believe that part of the prep athletic experience -- at least for elite athletes -- is dealing with the media. For many prep players, this will be the only chance in their lives where they will have the opportunity to be interviewed.
I've had many people come up to me over the years (I covered prep sports exclusively for the Tribune for 12 years) and tell me that I once interviewed them after this game or that game. Not that I am a particularly good interviewer, but they always say something like, "I've never forgotten that."
My experience over the years is that high school coaches and teams need the mainstream media a lot more than we need them. There are 122 boys prep basketball teams in the state. We'll just shift our coverage elsewhere.
What hurts this particular blog the most is the fact that the Knights are flat-out loaded with college recruits -- probably more so than any other school in recent memory. Tough to blog about these guys when you can't talk to them.
In fairness, Lewis did provide the cell phone number of Haws' father, Marty, for all recruiting-related questions. The irony that night was that Lewis delivered the "off-limits" news to me, Michael Black of the Deseret News and Beky Beaton of the Provo Daily Herald just minutes after Tyler Haws had given a cable television interview after scoring 29 points in the easy win over Brighton. Either Lewis just came up with it when I asked to speak to Tyler, or Tyler had forgotten the edict when he ran off the court and was grabbed by the TV guys.
Anyway, I did find out a little more about Haws' recruitment from a variety of other sources.
For instance, Haws has offers from Utah, BYU and Pepperdine, as has been reported previously. Utah coach Jim Boylen and athletic director Chris Hill were in attendance Friday, as well as Tim Lacomb, BYU's director of basketball operations.
A good source told me that Stanford, which had coaches in a few weeks ago to watch Lone Peak's game against Bingham, has made it known that it wants Haws, too, through an intermediary. However, the Cardinal has not submitted the offer in writing or anything like that.
There's been some scuttlebutt out there that Utah is recruiting Haws more heavily than BYU.
Not true.
They are dead-even, mostly because NCAA rules restrict the amount of contact that college coaches can have with seniors who have not signed yet, let alone juniors. With juniors, coaches get something like one phone call per month. Suffice it to say that those calls are being used.
--------------------------------
I had a chance to talk to Brighton coach Lyndon Johnson about some of the Bengals' college prospects after the game. Brighton senior Jace Tavita has signed with Utah.
Fellow senior Ali Langford, who had 22 points, is being looked at by all the local junior colleges and some smaller out-of-state schools. The same can be said of 6-foot-1 Abe Millsap, younger brother of Utah Jazz star Paul Millsap.
Of course, the Brighton player everybody will hear a lot about in the future is freshman Corbin Miller. Yes, he's a freshman.
Miller has led the team in scoring two of the past four games and is simply a superstar in the making. If he keeps improving, Miller will be the next big-time recruit in the state, after Haws.
2 Comments:
funny story about Corbin Miller. he is the little brother of Larry Miller, starting guard for Jordan. Larry played with tavita, langford, hanna, and richardson on the brighton sophomore team (minus tavita given he was starting with the Big Bell) for brighton when they were all freshmen. it will be fun to see that match up when brighton plays jordan.
There are some ACC schools who have interest in Corbin Miller.
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