Some brilliant person posted this elsewhere:
During our history, we have hired exactly one assistant who had been a proven high level high major recruiter. And he happened to be between jobs after a failed, somewhat scandal tinged tenure as the head coach at a low / mid major. Candidates with the qualifications of Orlando Antigua are not often readily available.
Here is a glance at some of our other better recruiting assistant coaches:
It was a dramatically different different era, but Howie Braun was hired straight out of college. He handled all the recruiting for Doug Mills and Harry Combes from 1937 to 1967.
Jimmy Collins, who played for Lou Henson at New Mexico State, was serving as a probation officer and volunteer elementary school volunteer coach in Chicago when Henson hired him. Collins helped land Lowell Hamilton, Nick Anderson, Kendal Gill, Kenny Battle, Marcus Liberty, Deon Thomas, Kiwane Garris, et al.
Tony Yates was an assistant coach at Cincinnati when Gene Bartow hired him. He helped Bartow and Henson recruit the likes of Audie Matthews, Eddie Johnson, the original Mark Smith, Derek Harper, Efrem Winters, Bruce Douglas, and Ken Norman, among others.
Nat Frazier (Nick Weatherspoon, Alvin O'Neal, Billy Morris, Kris Berymon) was an assistant under Harv Schmidt from 1967-1971. He came to us from Delaware State.
Frazier went on to the had job at then D-2 Morgan State. He recruited Marvin "The Human Eraser" Webster and won a D-2 Championship there.
Bruce Weber gave Jerrance Howard his first assistant coach job. "Snacks" had been a support staff coach at UK. He was also coached by and/or played for Lon Kruger, Bill Self, and Weber at UI. He is credited with turning recruiting around at UI in 2009.
Reports indicated Rob Judson helped Lon Kruger land Sergio McClain, Marcus Griffin, Frank Williams and Brian Cook. Judson is a UI alum who played for Henson and had been an assistant at Bradley.
Norm Roberts and Billy Gillispie came with Bill Self from Tulsa.
We pried Chin Coleman away from UIC.
Jamall Walker (JCL, Leron Black) followed John Groce from Ohio U. btw, I think Walker is undervalued by fans. He faced stiff competition from a couple head coaches in the St. Louis / Metro East areas and lost a couple commitments with the coaching change.
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