Now that is what I call more specific information. Thanks Matt.
So looking at some videos. Lakriesha is from British Columbia. She is a 6-0, 155 lb shooting guard. In the videos I watched she hit about 50 3 pointers in a row. lol. I did not see her shoot any 3’s off the dribble or with a stepback move. From the videos she was always a catch and shoot 3 point shooter. She does show the ability to put the ball on the floor and finish with either hand equally well. While not fast, she is able to get to the rim when her outside shot is taken away. She has played with the British Columbia territorial team in Canadian national competitions. I would say she looks good enough to play in the MAC right away. Six foot guards have been few and far between at Miami. Welcome to America and our beautiful university!
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Cool. She’s from Chilliwack in the Lower Mainland - about an hour and a half up the Fraser River from downtown Vancouver on the Trans Canada. Great BCHL town - been there for hockey several times. Looks like she played her secondary school basketball in the Fort Erie, Ontario program - a breeding ground for Canadian hoops talent. Welcome to Miami!
Chiliwack! Sounds like what happens after I eat too many Skylines.
So nothing has been announced since June 6th, we are still sitting at 8 or 9 scholarship players. All other schools have been working out with their full roster this summer.
What we have might be our full roster.
However, Coach Box is working hard with what he has.
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Maybe he will pick up a recruited walk on or hold a tryout. I think on the men’s side Yofan is proof you can find some real diamonds. Of course, I don’t know much about women’s hoops and as such maybe there aren’t as many good players from a walk on perspective.
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Attention to detail, fundamentals, things that have been missing. I am cautiously excited about this hire.
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I would expect that if we have any more late additions for this year they would most likely be players who have foreign roots like this young lady.
More likely to be under the radar players who do not get as much recruiting attention as U.S. players.
I’m gonna stand by my prediction we win more games year one then whatever the last regimes high water mark was. 12? I feel pretty confident about that.
She played in the US last year. More likely she was in the portal and was still looking for a landing spot.
Madison Huhn is mentioned in the article on practice, so for the first time we have confirmation that she is still coming to Oxford. That puts us at 10 girls. The coverage of the building of this roster has been sparse to nonexistent. Where is a discussion of what his recruiting plans are ??? In following college basketball for all these years, I have never before seen a team which is so late in putting together it’s roster. Coach Box did a great job of quickly putting together what looks like an excellent staff. Our previous coach took forever to put together her staff and caused us to be way behind with everything in her first season, then in her third season she took forever to replace an assistant who took a job as the head coach at Canicius.
So we are practicing and putting in basic foundational things but we are still a long way from completing the roster and the players yet to be signed are missing all these important building steps.
My criticisms have little to do with Coach Box or his staff, I pretty much like every thing about them. They have to deal with the situation they inherited. I am, however, still really irritated by the administration at Miami with their total botching of then entire situation. They refused to fire a failed coach when they should have at the end of the season, they did not know what was going on in the program, and then they tried to cover it up. They also took way too long to hire the coach and allowed most of the roster to leave before getting a coach hired. It is like we have handicapped ourselves compared to every other team and put the program in a really difficult position. A big part of the job of the administration is too never let your program get into such a spot. The coverage on MURedHawks.com has also been terrible and they still have last year’s roster listed. I just think everybody deserves better.
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Agree - check out our hockey situation !
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Yes, I know she played in the U.S. last year and at JUCO in Utah the year before.
That is why I said foreign roots. The fact is that even if someone played in the U.S. for a year or so in college the foreign players are a little under the radar of most coaches who see almost all of the U.S. kids in high school at camps, AAU. tournaments, etc. Therefore, there is a base knowledge to begin if they go in the transfer portal. Same is not true of players with foreign roots.
I agree with everything you are saying.
However, as to your point that in following college BB for all these years, you have never seen a team which is so late in putting together its roster, I would add the following.
Not many teams had to fire a coach for what we had to.
The timing was also awful coming so far after the season.
It also came with the advent of the transfer portal that allowed a lot of players to exit that would have been difficult to do in the past.
The uncertainty also gave some of the incoming freshman a reason to seek out other programs.
It took too long to hire Box.
By the time he was hired the ability to fill the roster was limited.
There were a lot of self-inflicted wounds in all of this by the AD and staff.
Coach Box has his work cut out for him as a result.
How much easier all of this would have been if Hendrix had been fired the day after season ended and Box was hired the day after that and showed up in Oxford the day after IU was eliminated from NCAA tourney.
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I guess it points out why Akron fired their fairly successful coach with a couple of weeks to go in the season. The quicker you make the transition, the better your chance of retaining your better players and the more time you have to pick up new players. Coach Box basically got hired so late that all our good players had left or had decided to leave and were just weighing their options and most all of the talent in the transfer portal and the freshmen recruits were already committed. I agree will all of your excellent points.
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Exactly. By hiring so late, taking so long, Box was hamstrung from the minute he took over.
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And he hasn’t complained. He gets to work and works like hell to turn the 6’s and 7’s he’s holding into a viable hand. There’s a great reminder here for those who only see the glass half empty. (I mean the world at large, not anyone here btw.) For the first time in a long time, I’m very high on the future of both men’s and women’s hoops.
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