by Paul Jordan
Let’s assume for a moment that 2011 recruits Quincy Miller and Tony Wroten end up going somewhere besides Kentucky to play their college basketball? How will the pundits see that? As a case of John Calipari be out-recruited? Possibly? Or could it possibly be a case of their Twitter accounts turning certain college coaches off to them? That’s a possibility as well.
I actually wanted to write on this a couple of weeks ago when I raised the possibility of Miller, Wroten, and Duece Bello going to Louisville, but did not want to open this can of worms. Fox’s Jeff Goodman officially blew that can open the other day with his artical about Quincy Miller and Tony Wroten where he raised the question of whether all the national hype could be damaging Miller and Wroten. (Hat tip to John Clay for finding the article).
Goodman writes that he is concerned for both Wroten and Miller as he feels they have their priorities out of whack:
"It’s because Wroten and Miller, who both remain uncommitted in the college recruiting game, both welcome the attention.In fact, they bask in it.And it could wind up being their downfall.I’ve seen it too often with recruits who are consumed by the recruiting process instead of just going out and letting their play dictate the story.It’s become a red flag.Some are more concerned with the number attached to their name in the recruiting rankings than the number attached to the score at the end of each game.See Darius Washington Jr., or Willie Warren, who have done nose-dives since being ranked near the top of their classes.Those guys loved to talk the talk. In fact, it was all about themselves — and it wound up costing them dearly."
Goodman then brought up Wroten’s recent tweet about the class rankings:
"“#ToBeHonest. If I’m not top 5 in the country then there shouldn’t b any rankings. Not being cocky just telling y’all how I feel"
And in a time when most players are narrowing their list of schools, Wroten expanded his list from a few to fifteen schools. So is he truly undecided … or just a drama queen? I have given my thoughts on Tony Wroten’s twittering here. It’s apparent that Miller and Wroten love the attention ….
But does John Calipari love the attention hounds? Well, judging from his 14 commitments thus far at Kentucky, the answer is a resounding NO he does not.
While John Wall took his time last year deciding to come to Kentucky, he was not online fueling speculation or engaging the fans of his finalist teams asking them where he should go. Same as for DeMarcus Cousins. While both players have large personalities, their recruiting period was relatively quiet with just a few comments from them about where they were headed.
To date, Quincy Miller has 3105 tweets sent. Anthony Wroten has 1621 tweets. By comparison, Michael Gilchrist has 228 so far and I could not find a twitter account for Marquis Teague. They are all 2011 recruits, yet strikingly different in their approach to social media and promoting themselves. And as Goodman pointed out, one of Gilchrist’s tweets was to congratulate fellow 2011 recruit Anthony Davis on possibly surpassing him on the rankings list:
"“Shout out to Anthony Davis, a lot of people think I would be mad that he’s number 1 but I’m happy for him for real.”"
I’m not trying to say that Miller’s and Wroten’s tweets are hurting their chances with other teams, but in a way, it’s all a part of playing into the team concept and we all know there is no I in team. Looking at Calipari’s Wildcats, we see that it is not an especially tweet-worthy team.
Darius Miller is the most prolific tweeter with 2402 tweets sent, most of them replies to personal friends or answering questions asked by fellow twitte-ers — not a lot of personal promotion there. The rest of the teams pales in comparison: Eloy Vargas has sent out 417, Jon Hood 240, Terrence Jones 235, and Josh Harrellson 137. It’s hard to say whether Calipari has a low key, non self promoting crowd, or if none of them want to compete with the master twitterer himself? Cal is the one with 2551 tweets and 1,113, 457 followers.
Is the UK twitter universe big enough for both Calipari and Miller/Wroten?
Only the twitter bird knows for sure.
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