Emmanuel Negadu

CBS's Gary Parrish is reporting that coaches from other programs are contacting Emmanuel Negadu's high school coach to gauge his interest in transferring. When a player hasn't asked for his release, it amazes me that this could take place. It smacks of tampering. I hope that Emmanuel will recognize that Arizona remains his best opportunity to play right now and pursue a championship.

Here's the link: http://www.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/1082613
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Recruiting's a dirty business.  This isn't much different than all of the negative recruiting that coaches have been doing against Arizona for years, telling recruits that Lute wouldn't be around to coach them all four years, if at all.  It's part of the game and Parrish is just shining some light on it, although he does seem to love stirring the pot with UA.  There's no doubt in my mind that Jennings and Withey have been getting calls as well.

He also says in his article that it's becoming increasingly common for schools to release recruits from their LOI when coaches change.  The difference is that in almost all of those cases, it's the head coach that changed.  Lute hasn't left, and there's no way in hell they'd let any of the recruits out of their commitment given their potential lack of depth next year.  And, in Emmanuel's case, he has specifically stated that Lute's one of the biggest reasons he committed to UA.  He's not going anywhere.

By the way, you'd think that Parrish would spell Negedu's name correctly if he was going to lead off his story with him...

Hosh,

Thanks for the spell check. I continued his spelling error in this post.

I also think it would be unlikely for that request to come or for Lute to release Emmanuel from his LOI, but it is still a little surprising that other coaches seem to be encouraging Emmanuel to ask for it.

We all know there's skulduggery in recruiting. Olson was called "Midnight Lute" by Jerry Tarkanian for years because Lute was sealing the deal after Tark thought he had a guy locked up. But I figured that kind of thing stopped once you got a guy to sign an LOI, let alone start school and be on campus for a year.

Exactly!  People still refer to him as "Midnight Lute", and who's to say that UA's not doing the same thing as other schools.  I'm not insinuating anything, but Jeff Withey DID decommit from Louisville (granted, it was just a verbal commitment) to attend UA.  And remember Bayless decommitting from UA before recommitting.  He was very close to signing with Texas, and I'd be shocked if UT wasn't staying on him after he'd pledged UA.

People want to believe that UA is a sinking ship right now.  That's what they're telling recruits - committed or not - and they all want a piece of it.  Just one of the many reasons that this upcoming season is the most critical in the program's history.

Um....  Apparently this story has legs.  Negedu IS apparently asking out of his LOI, or has already asked out.  From what I understand, he told Lute he wanted out and Lute told him something to the effect of "you'd have a better shot at playing in Europe next year than getting released from your LOI".  I don't know how much of it's true, but apparently Lute even tried to involve Josh Pastner in convincing him to stay.  Lute's supposedly on his way to the east coast to meet with Negedu now.

It's a train wreck.