Javyn Nicholson is a incoming freshman, but one has to give up to the kid for her work ethic. She is putting in some serious work on her fitness. The running and conditioning she is putting in is crazy, but will help her play long stretches. That is one area that freshman struggle along with the speed of the collegiate game. Depending upon the work the team puts in will be telling. Do I think we are crumbling as was stated in an earlier post? Nah! Did we lose some key pieces? Yes, but that provides others a viable opportunity to step up. As my coach (Coach Gibson) would always say, "you better be ready when your number is called". If you can more out of Staiti and Paul in the post, we will be fine. I think Que will get her mojo back and Shaniya Jones is definitely a hooper. I think she can make up some ground with the loss of Cole. I didn't say that she equates to Cole's production, but she can soften that blow a little. Mikayla Coombs is giving Georgia a hard look and it will cause us not to bring in both, Madison Hayes and Anaya Boyd. I think UGA will only land one of the two,if Coombs decides to make Athens her home.
One thing that I will say. I have been close to many recruiting circles in our state and many of the AAU coaches and some high school coaches are the reason our program struggles. With that, I say this, many of them wanted Andy to hire them and when he did not that many ridiculed him and basically blackballed the program. Some were even two-faced to the man which was mind boggling to me as an adult. Andy's hiring of Tasha Humphrey's mother was detrimental to our program, because I don't think she was ready to coach and recruit at this level, so that is another contributing factor. Many of these high school coaches are looking for ways for themselves to gain some type of clout and popularity for sending their kids to schools they see as "big" names and that is why we are seeing a huge spike in transfers. That is why I have respect for coaches like Jan Azar, the coaches from St. Francis and Holy Innocence because they don't get down like that. Coach Hubbard and Kirk Pointer are others that don't try and sway their players to go to their biggest offers. They allow their players to make their own decisions without persuasive tactics.