Funny things happen at in-home visits
Oct 11, 2007 17:57:46 GMT -5
Post by Willie on Oct 11, 2007 17:57:46 GMT -5
Funny things happen at in-home visits
Jeff Goodman
FOXSports.com, Updated 3 hours ago
Midnight Madness is almost here and we figured we'd lighten the mood. Friday was the last day that college coaches were allowed to do in-home visits with recruits for a while. Here's a look at some of the most entertaining in-home visit stories we've heard over the years.
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Leonard Hamilton's first in-home visit certainly was memorable. He was actually a part-time guy at Austin Peay and just one year removed from college. The full-time coach quit during the season so Hamilton hit the road recruiting. His first in-home was at the home of James "Fly" Williams in New York City. Hamilton arrived at the house at 7 p.m. and Fly's mother was the only one home. Hamilton connected well with the mother and they spoke for hours while waiting for Fly to come home. "We talked and talked," Hamilton said. "She was so unbelievably nice to me, but I was getting nervous." It was midnight and Hamilton was afraid that she was going to ask him to leave, so when Fly's mother wasn't looking, he turned the clock in the kitchen back to 10:30. "Every hour or so I'd turn the clock back," he said. "I tried not to ever let the clock get past midnight." It was 6 a.m. and Hamilton saw the sun starting to come up, so he then went over and pulled the blinds shut so she wouldn't see the sunlight. There was finally a knock on the door at 7 a.m. "Open up," Fly said. "It's me." Hamilton continued his in-home and the rest is history. Fly averaged 29.4 points per game as a freshman at Austin Peay.
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This coach didn't want his name out there and I don't blame him. He walks into an in-home visit and can't hold it in. He's got to go to the bathroom real bad and goes upstairs. There's just one problem: There's no toilet paper anywhere. He proceeds to use a towel in the bathroom and attempts to flush it down the toilet. Needless to say, the toilet clogs up and it's a messy scene within seconds. The coach runs downstairs and says to his head coach, "We've got to get out of here. We're not getting this kid."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The late Jimmy Valvano went into Chris Corchiani's home and his father started asking Jimmy V. about what type of offense he'd run if his son came to NC State. Next thing you know Valvano was re-arranging the furniture and showing the family. "He grabbed the lamp, then would set a pick and grab the sofa and then the television," Corchiani said. "He was carrying on and my parents were really enjoying it. By the end, the room was a complete mess."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Lappas was in his first year as a full-time assistant at Villanova under Rollie Massimino and was heading down to Mississippi to try and land Litterial Green. Massimino was skeptical that the Wildcats had any chance, but the wide-eyed Lappas tried to convince him otherwise. They go to the school and there are already about a half-dozen other coaches there. Massimino is already mad, because Lappas had told him they were one of just a few schools recruiting Green. They end up waiting about two hours and then follow Green to his house for the in-home. Well, Green first stops at a store to get a bottle of water and then makes another pit stop — this time for pizza. "Rollie is killing me at this point," Lappas said. The home visit lasts a grand total of 15 minutes. Lappas then pulls out of the driveway and goes right into a storm ditch. "The car was about at a 90-degree angle in the ditch," Lappas said. "Rollie is cursing at me like there's no tomorrow." Then some guy comes out and says he's got a tow truck and will get the car out in exchange for a six-pack of beer. It took three hours to get the car out of the ditch and by then, Massimino was starving. Lappas knows he needs to hit a home run, so he finds a little Chinese food place along the way. Massimino is livid from the day's events, but the owner apparently recognizes the 'Nova coach. "I know you," he says. "You're Buddy Ryan."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Bill Self and Billy Gillispie were back at Tulsa, they went into Houston to try and get 6-foot-8 forward George Williams. When they got to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, all they had left was a 15-seat passenger van. They pull up to the house in this mammoth van, go inside and start the visit. Next thing you know the electricity goes out. They tried candles, but that didn't work. They tried doing the visit in the pitch black, but that didn't work, either, so they took everyone into the van, turned on the dome light and conducted the in-home. Needless to say, Self didn't get his guy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stetson coach Derek Waugh was on a visit in Miami and was watching the recruit and his high school team work out in the weight room. The prospect had 285 pounds on the bench, so Waugh jumps down in his dress shirt and says the kid should up the weight. Waugh proceeds to lift the bar, bring it down and push it back up. In doing so, he tore the pectoral muscle right off his shoulder (it later required major surgery). He went to the trainer and had it wrapped in ice. During the visit, Waugh began to bleed internally — which ran down his arm and turned it a bluish purple color. Waugh became concerned and started to sweat profusely. Waugh then started shivering and excused himself before finishing the visit. For all his hard work, Waugh didn't even get the kid.
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The coach didn't want to be identified on this one and it's fairly clear why. We will tell you that it was a long-time New York-area coach who went into a local home with the entire family (kid, parents, grandmother, brother, sister) in attendance. He and the head coach wanted to put in a highlight tape to show the recruit, but the family said that the VCR was broken. They family proceeded to take a VCR out of one of the bedrooms. After the coach hooked up the wires, a tape that was already in the machine began to play and it wasn't basketball on the screen. It was a porn tape. The mother jumped across the coffee table to pull the plug on the movie. The two coaches in the room didn't flinch until they got a few blocks away and they started laughing so hard they began to cry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Davidson and Maryland coach Lefty Driesell has some terrific stories and one of his best in-homes came when he was at Davidson and was recruiting Fred Hetzel out of Washington, D.C. Driesell walks in the house, sits down and Hetzel's mom opens up a straw basket and out comes a pet snake. "She wanted him to go Ivy, so I took that snake, picked it up and let him run around my neck," Driesell said. "Luckily, it wasn't poisonous."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wright State head coach Brad Brownell makes the trek to Braham, Minn., a small rural town where Nate Dahlman lives. He goes on a tour of the farm that Dahlman's family runs and sees the chickens, hogs and other animals. He's then asked if he'd like chicken for dinner. Shortly thereafter, he probably ate the same chicken he was looking at earlier. "It was a great dinner," Brownell said. "They raise their own food. They were good people and I had a great time."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Self's visit to Julian Wright's home a few years ago was a shocker. The Kansas coach had barely spoken to Wright and couldn't get in the mix. Wright's mother eventually allowed Self to go into the home on the first day. Self was going through the presentation when Wright said he'd heard enough. "I want to come take a look. I'm going to visit," Wright said. Self left and he was down the road when Wright's mother called him to return to the house. "There's something we need to ask you," she said. Self said he thought some school had already blown up the Jayhawks. He got back to the house and Julian said, "I'm coming." Self replied with, "I know. You already told us you were coming on a visit." In fact, Wright was committing on the spot.
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About a year ago, Jacksonville coach Cliff Warren went into a recruit's grandmother's house. He sat down on the couch and heard arguing in the back room as he started his presentation. He began flipping the pages when the recruit's uncle came out of the back room yelling and screaming at his own son. Next thing you know the recruit goes into the kitchen, grabs a butter knife and tells his uncle to get the hell out of the house. Then he gently placed the knife down on the table in front of Warren.
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Texas A&M assistant Scott Spinelli recently landed from a flight and was set to meet his head coach, Mark Turgeon, at a home for a visit. He forgot a pair of dress socks and didn't want to go into the home without socks. He didn't have much time, so he stopped at a Walgreen's near the house. There were no colored socks. Then he went to CVS. Nothing except for women's trouser socks. Spinelli walked into the house with a nice pair of women's trouser socks around his ankles. "I couldn't go in and disrespect the family without socks," he said. "So I had to wear either women's trouser socks or nylons. I didn't have a choice."
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Tom Crean was in his first year at Marquette and was visiting a kid by the name of Dwyane Wade. Crean went into the home of Wade's girlfriend (now his wife) and pulled out all of his materials. Wade's mother says, "Look, they spelled your name wrong, too." Crean and his staff screwed it up and spelled it Dwayne. "At that time I thought we would be out, but that was the beauty because no one else was recruiting him," Crean said.
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The family lives on the third floor in an inner-city apartment. The two coaches are talking to the family on the bottom floor and a van pulls up. The head coach has his back to the van, so he can't see that the uncle is handicapped and being helped out of the van by two other men. The two men fireman's carry the uncle up the stairs as the head coach turns around and says, "Hey Buddy, What happened? Did you have too much to drink?"
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Mike Krzyzewski and his two assistants a few years back, Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey and Harvard head man Tommy Amaker, went into Grant Hill's home. In those days, they had to bring a portable tape machine because some families had VHS and others BETA. The younger assistant (in this case it was Amaker) had to carry this machine. Anyway, the Hills had BETA, so it took a while to switch things over. Brey couldn't get the wire in the back of the TV to screw in, so he literally had to stand behind the TV for three hours and hold the wire in place. "That was my role," Brey joked. "My fingers were falling off."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gonzaga's Mark Few and former Zags assistant Bill Grier were out in Portland a few years ago on Labor Day weekend. They got to the home of a recruit and it was chaotic. After they finally sat down, the family began peppering Few with questions: academics, how they see the kid fitting in, even what number he would wear. Grier's cell phone was dead, so he checked his office line after the visit and got a message a day earlier from the kid saying he had committed to Oregon. "The kid was grilling us and it was already a done deal," Few said.
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Bob Huggins and Andy Kennedy went into Kennedy Winston's home in Alabama and it was brutally hot out. "A.K. tells me to try not to start sweating before we go in," Huggins said. "But it looks like I wet my pants. It's dripping off my forehead and it's running off my face like someone's got a hose." The grass looked like it hadn't been mowed in months ("It was 3-feet high") and Winston's mom had hired someone to cut the lawn. Smoke started coming through the windows and they looked outside and saw that the mower was smoking. The mother and the man proceeded to get into a shouting match.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one isn't an in-home, but it's worth telling, anyway. South Carolina coach Dave Odom, back when he was an assistant at Virginia, was picking up a few recruits in the New York City area to bring to campus. He flew into Rochester, N.Y., and picked up Tom Sheehey early in the morning in a cab. Sheehey came out and got into the cab at around 6 a.m. with his mother, father and sister all watching. All of the sudden Odom heard one of Sheehey's parents say, "Oh, my God." The taxi driver had run over Sheehey's family dog. "Tom jumped out of the car and he can tell the dog is hurt, so he goes to grab the dog," Odom said. "The dog is so scared, he forgets and bites down on Tom's hands." Blood is everywhere. The mother is a nurse, the dad is a doctor. They wrap the hand in a towel and the parents agree to let their son go on the visit and get checked out at the medical school at Virginia. Later he becomes a star for the Cavaliers.
msn.foxsports.com/cbk/story/7319228?CMP=OTC-K9B140813162&ATT=99
Jeff Goodman
FOXSports.com, Updated 3 hours ago
Midnight Madness is almost here and we figured we'd lighten the mood. Friday was the last day that college coaches were allowed to do in-home visits with recruits for a while. Here's a look at some of the most entertaining in-home visit stories we've heard over the years.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Leonard Hamilton's first in-home visit certainly was memorable. He was actually a part-time guy at Austin Peay and just one year removed from college. The full-time coach quit during the season so Hamilton hit the road recruiting. His first in-home was at the home of James "Fly" Williams in New York City. Hamilton arrived at the house at 7 p.m. and Fly's mother was the only one home. Hamilton connected well with the mother and they spoke for hours while waiting for Fly to come home. "We talked and talked," Hamilton said. "She was so unbelievably nice to me, but I was getting nervous." It was midnight and Hamilton was afraid that she was going to ask him to leave, so when Fly's mother wasn't looking, he turned the clock in the kitchen back to 10:30. "Every hour or so I'd turn the clock back," he said. "I tried not to ever let the clock get past midnight." It was 6 a.m. and Hamilton saw the sun starting to come up, so he then went over and pulled the blinds shut so she wouldn't see the sunlight. There was finally a knock on the door at 7 a.m. "Open up," Fly said. "It's me." Hamilton continued his in-home and the rest is history. Fly averaged 29.4 points per game as a freshman at Austin Peay.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This coach didn't want his name out there and I don't blame him. He walks into an in-home visit and can't hold it in. He's got to go to the bathroom real bad and goes upstairs. There's just one problem: There's no toilet paper anywhere. He proceeds to use a towel in the bathroom and attempts to flush it down the toilet. Needless to say, the toilet clogs up and it's a messy scene within seconds. The coach runs downstairs and says to his head coach, "We've got to get out of here. We're not getting this kid."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The late Jimmy Valvano went into Chris Corchiani's home and his father started asking Jimmy V. about what type of offense he'd run if his son came to NC State. Next thing you know Valvano was re-arranging the furniture and showing the family. "He grabbed the lamp, then would set a pick and grab the sofa and then the television," Corchiani said. "He was carrying on and my parents were really enjoying it. By the end, the room was a complete mess."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steve Lappas was in his first year as a full-time assistant at Villanova under Rollie Massimino and was heading down to Mississippi to try and land Litterial Green. Massimino was skeptical that the Wildcats had any chance, but the wide-eyed Lappas tried to convince him otherwise. They go to the school and there are already about a half-dozen other coaches there. Massimino is already mad, because Lappas had told him they were one of just a few schools recruiting Green. They end up waiting about two hours and then follow Green to his house for the in-home. Well, Green first stops at a store to get a bottle of water and then makes another pit stop — this time for pizza. "Rollie is killing me at this point," Lappas said. The home visit lasts a grand total of 15 minutes. Lappas then pulls out of the driveway and goes right into a storm ditch. "The car was about at a 90-degree angle in the ditch," Lappas said. "Rollie is cursing at me like there's no tomorrow." Then some guy comes out and says he's got a tow truck and will get the car out in exchange for a six-pack of beer. It took three hours to get the car out of the ditch and by then, Massimino was starving. Lappas knows he needs to hit a home run, so he finds a little Chinese food place along the way. Massimino is livid from the day's events, but the owner apparently recognizes the 'Nova coach. "I know you," he says. "You're Buddy Ryan."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When Bill Self and Billy Gillispie were back at Tulsa, they went into Houston to try and get 6-foot-8 forward George Williams. When they got to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, all they had left was a 15-seat passenger van. They pull up to the house in this mammoth van, go inside and start the visit. Next thing you know the electricity goes out. They tried candles, but that didn't work. They tried doing the visit in the pitch black, but that didn't work, either, so they took everyone into the van, turned on the dome light and conducted the in-home. Needless to say, Self didn't get his guy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stetson coach Derek Waugh was on a visit in Miami and was watching the recruit and his high school team work out in the weight room. The prospect had 285 pounds on the bench, so Waugh jumps down in his dress shirt and says the kid should up the weight. Waugh proceeds to lift the bar, bring it down and push it back up. In doing so, he tore the pectoral muscle right off his shoulder (it later required major surgery). He went to the trainer and had it wrapped in ice. During the visit, Waugh began to bleed internally — which ran down his arm and turned it a bluish purple color. Waugh became concerned and started to sweat profusely. Waugh then started shivering and excused himself before finishing the visit. For all his hard work, Waugh didn't even get the kid.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The coach didn't want to be identified on this one and it's fairly clear why. We will tell you that it was a long-time New York-area coach who went into a local home with the entire family (kid, parents, grandmother, brother, sister) in attendance. He and the head coach wanted to put in a highlight tape to show the recruit, but the family said that the VCR was broken. They family proceeded to take a VCR out of one of the bedrooms. After the coach hooked up the wires, a tape that was already in the machine began to play and it wasn't basketball on the screen. It was a porn tape. The mother jumped across the coffee table to pull the plug on the movie. The two coaches in the room didn't flinch until they got a few blocks away and they started laughing so hard they began to cry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Former Davidson and Maryland coach Lefty Driesell has some terrific stories and one of his best in-homes came when he was at Davidson and was recruiting Fred Hetzel out of Washington, D.C. Driesell walks in the house, sits down and Hetzel's mom opens up a straw basket and out comes a pet snake. "She wanted him to go Ivy, so I took that snake, picked it up and let him run around my neck," Driesell said. "Luckily, it wasn't poisonous."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wright State head coach Brad Brownell makes the trek to Braham, Minn., a small rural town where Nate Dahlman lives. He goes on a tour of the farm that Dahlman's family runs and sees the chickens, hogs and other animals. He's then asked if he'd like chicken for dinner. Shortly thereafter, he probably ate the same chicken he was looking at earlier. "It was a great dinner," Brownell said. "They raise their own food. They were good people and I had a great time."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Self's visit to Julian Wright's home a few years ago was a shocker. The Kansas coach had barely spoken to Wright and couldn't get in the mix. Wright's mother eventually allowed Self to go into the home on the first day. Self was going through the presentation when Wright said he'd heard enough. "I want to come take a look. I'm going to visit," Wright said. Self left and he was down the road when Wright's mother called him to return to the house. "There's something we need to ask you," she said. Self said he thought some school had already blown up the Jayhawks. He got back to the house and Julian said, "I'm coming." Self replied with, "I know. You already told us you were coming on a visit." In fact, Wright was committing on the spot.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About a year ago, Jacksonville coach Cliff Warren went into a recruit's grandmother's house. He sat down on the couch and heard arguing in the back room as he started his presentation. He began flipping the pages when the recruit's uncle came out of the back room yelling and screaming at his own son. Next thing you know the recruit goes into the kitchen, grabs a butter knife and tells his uncle to get the hell out of the house. Then he gently placed the knife down on the table in front of Warren.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Texas A&M assistant Scott Spinelli recently landed from a flight and was set to meet his head coach, Mark Turgeon, at a home for a visit. He forgot a pair of dress socks and didn't want to go into the home without socks. He didn't have much time, so he stopped at a Walgreen's near the house. There were no colored socks. Then he went to CVS. Nothing except for women's trouser socks. Spinelli walked into the house with a nice pair of women's trouser socks around his ankles. "I couldn't go in and disrespect the family without socks," he said. "So I had to wear either women's trouser socks or nylons. I didn't have a choice."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Crean was in his first year at Marquette and was visiting a kid by the name of Dwyane Wade. Crean went into the home of Wade's girlfriend (now his wife) and pulled out all of his materials. Wade's mother says, "Look, they spelled your name wrong, too." Crean and his staff screwed it up and spelled it Dwayne. "At that time I thought we would be out, but that was the beauty because no one else was recruiting him," Crean said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The family lives on the third floor in an inner-city apartment. The two coaches are talking to the family on the bottom floor and a van pulls up. The head coach has his back to the van, so he can't see that the uncle is handicapped and being helped out of the van by two other men. The two men fireman's carry the uncle up the stairs as the head coach turns around and says, "Hey Buddy, What happened? Did you have too much to drink?"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Krzyzewski and his two assistants a few years back, Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey and Harvard head man Tommy Amaker, went into Grant Hill's home. In those days, they had to bring a portable tape machine because some families had VHS and others BETA. The younger assistant (in this case it was Amaker) had to carry this machine. Anyway, the Hills had BETA, so it took a while to switch things over. Brey couldn't get the wire in the back of the TV to screw in, so he literally had to stand behind the TV for three hours and hold the wire in place. "That was my role," Brey joked. "My fingers were falling off."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gonzaga's Mark Few and former Zags assistant Bill Grier were out in Portland a few years ago on Labor Day weekend. They got to the home of a recruit and it was chaotic. After they finally sat down, the family began peppering Few with questions: academics, how they see the kid fitting in, even what number he would wear. Grier's cell phone was dead, so he checked his office line after the visit and got a message a day earlier from the kid saying he had committed to Oregon. "The kid was grilling us and it was already a done deal," Few said.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bob Huggins and Andy Kennedy went into Kennedy Winston's home in Alabama and it was brutally hot out. "A.K. tells me to try not to start sweating before we go in," Huggins said. "But it looks like I wet my pants. It's dripping off my forehead and it's running off my face like someone's got a hose." The grass looked like it hadn't been mowed in months ("It was 3-feet high") and Winston's mom had hired someone to cut the lawn. Smoke started coming through the windows and they looked outside and saw that the mower was smoking. The mother and the man proceeded to get into a shouting match.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This one isn't an in-home, but it's worth telling, anyway. South Carolina coach Dave Odom, back when he was an assistant at Virginia, was picking up a few recruits in the New York City area to bring to campus. He flew into Rochester, N.Y., and picked up Tom Sheehey early in the morning in a cab. Sheehey came out and got into the cab at around 6 a.m. with his mother, father and sister all watching. All of the sudden Odom heard one of Sheehey's parents say, "Oh, my God." The taxi driver had run over Sheehey's family dog. "Tom jumped out of the car and he can tell the dog is hurt, so he goes to grab the dog," Odom said. "The dog is so scared, he forgets and bites down on Tom's hands." Blood is everywhere. The mother is a nurse, the dad is a doctor. They wrap the hand in a towel and the parents agree to let their son go on the visit and get checked out at the medical school at Virginia. Later he becomes a star for the Cavaliers.
msn.foxsports.com/cbk/story/7319228?CMP=OTC-K9B140813162&ATT=99