Negative recruiting? Oh no!

I suspect most fans are up in arms about the negative recruiting angle. So for the sake of argument, let’s make the leap that it was in fact a Clemson assistant coach behind this. Or a Clemson booster.

Survey madness? You decide

ESPN.com has compiled a list of the most prestigious men’s hoops programs of the last 24 years, and South Caro-lina comes in, well, pretty low. Top 50? No. Top 100? Keep going. In fact, go all the way down to … a tie for 185th. Tied with McNeese State, among others.

Yikes.

Horn and the players speak

Downey said his new coach told him “from Day One” that his role as the point guard is “just to win.” So I asked whether that meant do what he did last year, or change anything up?

“I ain’t win last year,” Downey said, laughing, “so I can’t do what I did last year. When I say winning it could be anything. It could be shooting less, shooting more, pass more, pass less. Getting your teammates shots. Winning is winning, it’s just doing what you need to do.”

Yes, it’s been awhile. Your faithful blogger has done a bit of world-traveling: I walked around the Parthenon, which predates Jesus Christ, and went to the Greek Isles, where I dipped my toes in the Mediterranean.

And now, I’m back. And pretty darn excited.

(Sigh.)

OK, it’s not that bad, especially since we were able to live up to the name of our blog on Friday. Along with several other media folks, we staked out Darrin Horn outside his office for no other reason than, hey, it was Friday and we had nothing better to do. Horn, who was just returning from lunch, looked about as pleased to see us as I was to leave the blue seas of the Aegean.

We also had a chance to talk with Devan Downey and Dominique Archie. There wasn’t really much news, and there wasn’t much to say on either side. At one point I turned to Archie and almost threw my hands up to say, there’s nothing much to say here, is there? He agreed.

“We can’t change anything that’s gonna happen in the season right now,” Archie said. “And we won’t know how good we are until the first game.”

But we can still offer up a few tidbits, analysis and other stuff on the team and how they’re adjusting to their new coaching staff. So on we go:

- So far, I don’t detect any ripping of the former staff, and no broad comparisons being made between Horn and Dave Odom.

“I don’t like to compare coaches,” Downey said. “But the only thing I’m going to say is everybody has their own style. Even when I played with AK in Cincinnati, every coach has their own style. Coach Odom did it his way, coach Horn does it his way.”

Archie said the biggest difference between Horn and Odom is the intensity level: “Coach Odom was probably more laid-back, but coach Horn’s more in your face.”

- Downey said his new coach told him “from Day One” that his role as the point guard is “just to win.” So I asked whether that meant do what he did last year, or change anything up?

“I ain’t win last year,” Downey said, laughing, “so I can’t do what I did last year. When I say winning it could be anything. It could be shooting less, shooting more, pass more, pass less. Getting your teammates shots. Winning is winning, it’s just doing what you need to do.”

And defense?

“Anything.”

I’m sure the coaches won’t be too pleased that Downey didn’t bring up defense himself. But he did later.

“The things I did last year may not be suitable for coach Horn’s system,” Downey said. “So whatever he wants me to do defensively, that’s what I’m going to do.”

- Since Downey and Archie are basically the team leaders, I asked each whom among the other nine scholarship players is surprising them. Archie said he didn’t want to single anyone out, saying only that “everybody’s working hard and improving.” Downey took a similar tack, saying that “everybody’s surprised” him, and every player is “sacrificing themselves to buy into his system.”

- The Gamecocks are heading off to Europe in a few weeks, which could be a decent team-building trip. While the players all know each other, since there are absolutely no new players, it will be a good chance to try Horn’s up-tempo system against real opponents, and away from the prying eyes of local fans.

“We’re gonna get a feel of where the team’s at, early, a feel before we come back and crank it up in (October),” Downey said.

Horn added that the trip gives the team extra practices it wouldn’t be allowed if it were staying home. A team is allowed a foreign trip once every four years.

(By the way, Downey has never been overseas before, so he gets quite the initiation in the form of a 10-hour plane ride to Eastern Europe. From recent personal experience, I told him it’s quite a doozy. “I’ve gotta get Benadryl or something,” Downey said.)

- The 2008-09 schedule remains a work in progress. Horn named five set opponents – Princeton on the road, and home games against Clemson, Jacksonville State, USC-Upstate and The Citadel. They’re also close to a deal with a game at College of Charleston, which will be early in the season, but not the arena-opener that Horn feared.

- Finally, recruiting. Given the commitment earlier in the week of Lakeem Jackson, a top 100 player and Horn’s first recruit, I asked Horn what he felt about his recruiting. He can’t comment on specific recruits, obviously.

“I think we’re making progress,” Horn said. “Again we said from the beginning we felt like we were behind, and that’s just the nature of how it works now. You see so many guys committing as even ninth- and 10th-graders. That doesn’t happen overnight, that happens over time. And so when we’re trying to sign juniors that are rising seniors, that means the kind of guy we wants has probably been recruited for a couple years now.

“So we felt like we’re playing catch-up, at the same time we feel like we’re making some kind of progress, and we think we’re making some inroads.”