Friday, August 07, 2009

Isiah Thomas Lands His First Top Recruit

We all knew that Isiah Thomas was going to land a big recruit or two to get his tenure going, and he's now got his first true blue chipper: Dominique Ferguson. The 6'9" athletic forward, who can play both the 3 and 4 spots on the floor (and honestly could probably be a dominating center in the Sun Belt as well), is rated 8th in the 2010 recruiting class by ESPN, 16th by Scout.com and 23rd by Rivals.com.

This coming season will be an interesting season for FIU because it will be a media circus, yet at the same time I don't expect to see much on the floor. In fact, the team will probably be worse than last year's team that went 7-11 in the Sun Belt with an RPI of 217th and a Sagarin rating of 247th. Thomas was unable to add any good recruits for his 2009 class (despite nearly nabbing a couple, such as Lance Stephenson), and a couple of kids bailed because of the coaching change.

While Isiah Thomas was a bad NBA coach, I think he gets too much blame because the disaster that was the New York Knicks was really due to the fact that they had the worst General Manager in the history of the NBA (unfortunately that, too, was Isiah Thomas). He won't be one of the better coaches in the Sun Belt, but he should hang in there. Unless he can find some Juco to add at the last moment, however, it's hard to see FIU finishing above .500 in the Sun Belt next season. But if he can pull in some more of those blue chippers then it won't matter what kind of game coach Thomas is: he'll win a lot of games in the Sun Belt.

But now the 2010-11 FIU team suddenly becomes a contender in the Sun Belt, and if they can add another big recruit or two then they might even become the favorites. We'll have to see how many more recruits Thomas can sign before he proves whether he can actually win games. If nothing else, it will all be interesting.

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