While the Mike Leach era of
Cougar football is just a few months away from making it’s debut game on a
Thursday night against BYU on ESPN, that does not stop Cougar basketball from
getting multiple headlines. Unfortunately most of these headlines are not positive
for Cougar fans all over the world. The 2012 basketball signing class was
thought to be Ken Bone’s best signing class during his tenure at WSU so far,
and the best WSU basketball signing class since the 2008 signing class which
featured Klay Thompson, Marcus Capers, and DeAngelo Casto just to name a few.
However, recruiting blunders are currently unfolding. It all started with
Richard Peters the center from Toronto Canada not being able to qualify for
school at Washington State University, which now has Peters looking at junior
college options in hopes of working towards playing Division 1 basketball.
Although Peters will still be in contact with WSU and will likely have them as
one of the top schools to consider when the recruiting process reopens up again,
this one really hurts. Richard Peters, despite being listed as 2 star recruit
on ESPN.com had attracted a lot of attention throughout the recruiting process
grabbing offers from Washington State, Washington, Clemson, Seton
Hall, and Auburn most notably.
While the loss of center Richard Peters was a huge blow
to the basketball program, more worries are possibly unfolding to realties. The
best-rated recruit in the 2012 class, guard from Phoenix Arizona, Demarquise
Johnson faces the same questions that Richard Peters had in academic eligibility
for enrolling into Washington State University. Before committing to Washington
State University, Demarquise Johnson was listed as a 3 star prospect on ESPN,
and Scouts.com listed him as a 4 star prospect and was drawing interest to many
schools throughout the nation, however the three schools that made the hardest
push were UNLV, Gonzaga, and Washington.
Recruiting changes are not the only things that are
taking place. Head coach Ken Bone, who will be entering his fourth season at
Washington State made a drastic coaching change in hopes to help strengthen the
recruiting process. Jeff Hironaka a close friend of Ken Bone and a three time
assistant coach for WSU has been demoted and will no longer be an assistant
coach for Washington State University, however Hironaka will still have a role
on the team. One of the reasons as to why Hironaka was demoted was because Bone
wanted to add a recruiter who has contacts in places that other recruiters at
WSU do not currently have. Before Hironka was demoted, WSU had three assistant coaches
who essentially recruited most of their players in Australia and Washington;
those are the two big pipelines that WSU recruiting feeds off of. While Ken
Bone is looking for an assistant coach to fill Hironka’s vacant position, its
fair to assume that whoever Ken Bone hires will surely help to diversify WSU
basketball in recruiting areas that WSU has not been opened to.
With recruiting and coaching changes taking place, what
does this tell us about the state of the program? What does this tell us about
Ken Bone? Is it time to think about cougar basketball without Bone as the head
coach? After all Bone has had three full seasons to showcase his coaching
abilities and let’s not forget that for two of those seasons he had Klay
Thompson at his disposal to help lead the Cougar’s toward the NCAA Tournament
and he has fell short all three seasons that has resulted in trips to the NIT
and CBI Tournament. With the recent hire of Mike Leach, athletic director Bill
Moos is not afraid to go big and make a change and although I personally think
Ken Bone has this program heading into the right direction, this upcoming season,
given the latest recruiting class blunders and coaching changes will give all
Cougar fans a great indication of where the program is headed and if they are
heading in the right direction, otherwise Ken Bone may have to be concerned
about more then just recruiting changes and assistant coaching changes.
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