Battle Dismissal Leaves Tulsa/Wojcik on Thin Ice

Last week, redshirt freshman Armond Battle was dismissed from the Tulsa basketball team for breaking team rules. The rumors are that Battle just couldn't put it together in the classroom. Wojcik can't be blamed for a player who won't study, but this is just the latest disappointment in the disaster that was the recruiting class of 2008. Battle is now the 4th player from that recruiting class to leave Tulsa just one year after they all arrived on campus and outside of Joe Richard miraculously developing an offensive game outside of 5 feet, that class was a complete waste.

The bigger travesty is that this leaves Tulsa with just 9 scholarship players to start the season, 3 of whom are true freshmen, which is a precarious situation for a team with the aspirations that Tulsa has for this season. Wojcik is on tenuous ground as it is with the Tulsa faithful thanks to his ill-advised criticism of the fanbase and blowout losses in big games. A coach can be excused for these transgressions if he's winning at an acceptable level, but 4 years without a trip to the dance is too long at Tulsa. As it stands, anything outside an NCAA tournament bid is a failure in 2010. The consensus right now is that Tulsa is a real bubble team for this year, but they're skating on thin ice and one injury could pop that bubble well before Selection Sunday. If that's the case, then Wojcik will have failed to make the tournament despite having 4 years with the best center in Tulsa history and for many Tulsa fans that would really be the last straw.

'Tis Better to have a Final Four Vacated than to Have Never Been At All

As a Tulsa fan, I should hate Memphis with a passion greater than almost any program in the country. They routinely embarrass our team on the court, they complain daily about leaving their worthless conference behind, and even when it looks like we might catch a bone, Antonio Anderson just rips it right back at the buzzer. (youtube)

And yet, I constantly find myself not hating Memphis in the least and even (gasp) rooting for them at times. Mostly I hate that Tulsa isn't even the same ballpark as Memphis in recruiting, on the floor, in the stands. Not since that 2000 season has Tulsa even come close to a level like that and that year is a speck that gets smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror every day. It's all a sobering reminder that maybe Tulsa does indeed deserve that nasty label of "mid-major".

But there's hope for a Tulsa fan watching Memphis roll through the NCAA tournament every year and it lies in the fact that deep down Memphis doesn't really look all that different. In spite of the conference, in spite of the tv contract, lacking access to the BCS fountain of youth, with at-large bids dwindling and selection criteria geared towards getting more 12-loss BCS teams in the tournament than ever before, Memphis ran roughshod over the traditional powers for a 4-year stretch on the court and on the recruiting trail. In one season, they destroyed UConn, Oklahoma, Georgetown, Arizona, UCLA, Michigan St, and Texas before bowing out in overtime of the national championship against Kansas. And that's in a single season! And through it all, the good old boys couldn't steal their coaches or their recruits or their fans. The death of the "if you can't beat 'em, just steal their coach" era was upon us! And then, just days after an uncharacteristic beating at the hands of Missouri in the sweet 16, it all started to crumble...

5 months later, here we are. Calipari is waxing poetic about his "dream job", the 2008 season and all of its glorious records are vacated, and the smug air that lies behind the reporting of all these incidents is stifling.

"What does this have to do with Tulsa?" you ask. "Isn't this a good thing? Doesn't it mean Tulsa is now the team to beat in conference USA?" Maybe we are, but only for this season and it's not the way it was supposed to happen. See, no true Tulsa fan ever wanted to drag Memphis down to our level. Sure, we took our fair share of shots, but deep down we knew that our program could get to that level as well and what would the pundits say when 2 Conference USA teams were playing in the Final 4!

In the end, I believe Memphis will recover. You can't change the fact that one of the best young point guards in the NBA went to the University of Memphis, you can't change the fact that a country full of players spent their impressionable years watching an athletic Memphis team play NBA ball for the last 5 years. In fact, from all indications, their recruiting won't suffer at all from the changes. (Rivals) The new beginning with Josh Pastner may be just what the doctor ordered. But it won't change the fact that our big brother, the one we looked up to for all those years, the one we hoped to emulate some day, was cheating all along and we're left looking into the darkness for another path, a clean path to the promise land hoping along the way that it's our program that's the next hero for the cause.

Tim Peete (2010) Interview

Thanks to the guys over at MemphisRoar.com for posting an interview with 2010 Tulsa commit Tim Peete.

“If it comes down to hitting that game winning shot against Memphis, I’m hitting that shot. To me, it’s all about winning, whatever it takes.”

MemphisRoar.com

Tim Peete (2010) commits to Tulsa

SG Tim Peete from Memphis Central High School committed to Tulsa last week becoming the second commitment in the 2010 class for Doug Wojcik. Peete averaged 13.5 ppg last year to lead his team to a 24-5 record falling to White Station in the Region 8-AAA semifinals. He becomes the first Memphis prep player to head to Tulsa since Willie Biles joined the Golden Hurricane in 1971.

By all accounts, Peete has a good mid-range game and is a creative scorer, but he's just average right now as a 3-point shooter. As is the case with many of Wojcik's recruits, Peete is considered a high-character guy with no problems in the classroom. He's rated as a 3-star prospect by Rivals and was drawing interest from Memphis, Missouri, and a slew of SEC teams. Tulsa has 2 scholarships remaining for this class and PG Jordan Clarkson (Converse Wagner) appears to be the top remaining target at this time.

Blondy Baruti (2010) commits to Tulsa

During the best years of Tulsa basketball the program was known for its superior guard play and many Tulsa fans believed that the only missing piece was a true center who could dominate the middle. Well, thanks in large part to the impressive development of Jerome Jordan who entered Tulsa as an unknown project and will leave as a first round draft choice, Tulsa continues to bring in promising center prospects with relative ease. 6'9" Blondy Baruti from Mesa, Arizona who played last year with Tulsa freshman Donte Medder, becomes the latest big man to join the Golden Hurricane and the first commit of the 2010 class for Doug Wojcik.

Baruti was named MVP of the "For the Love of the Game" tournament on July 4th averaging 13 points, 12 rebounds, and 6 blocks per game. His team most recently was 4-1 at the Adidas Super 64 in Las Vegas where Blondy put up 11 points, 13 rebounds, and 4 blocks against the Dallas Mustangs, hit a game-winning 15-footer in the next game, and then put up 8 blocks in the 1st half of his final game. Joel Francisco of Scouts, Inc. had this to say about himi: "Baruti is a physical specimen that is raw and explosive at both ends."

Baruti was declared ineligible in January of his junior season at Mesa High School due to transfer rules, but despite rumors that he would head to prep school for his senior season, Blondy has decided to return to Mesa High and hopes to be reinstated for his senior season. He was drawing interest from Missouri, Georgia Tech, and a number of Pac-10 schools before committing to Tulsa.

Highlights