While the Mike
Leach era of Cougar football is just a few months away from making it’s debut
game on a Thursday night against BYU on ESPN, that does not stop Cougar
basketball from getting multiple headlines. Unfortunately most of these
headlines are not positive for Cougar fans all over the world. The 2012
basketball signing class was thought to be Ken Bone’s best signing class during
his tenure at WSU so far, and the best WSU basketball signing class since the
2008 signing class which featured Klay Thompson, Marcus Capers, and DeAngelo
Casto just to name a few. However, recruiting blunders are currently unfolding.
It all started with Richard Peters the center from Toronto Canada not being
able to qualify for school at Washington State University, which now has Peters
looking at junior college options in hopes of working towards playing Division
1 basketball. Although Peters will still be in contact with WSU and will likely
have them as one of the top schools to consider when the recruiting process
reopens up again, this one really hurts. Richard Peters, despite being listed
as 2 star recruit on ESPN.com had attracted a lot of attention throughout the
recruiting process grabbing offers from Washington State, Washington, Clemson,
Seton Hall, and Auburn most notably.
While the loss of center Richard Peters was a huge blow to the basketball
program, more worries are possibly unfolding to realties. The best-rated recruit
in the 2012 class, guard from Phoenix Arizona, Demarquise Johnson faces the
same questions that Richard Peters had in academic eligibility for enrolling
into Washington State University. Before committing to Washington State
University, Demarquise Johnson was listed as a 3 star prospect on ESPN, and
Scouts.com listed him as a 4 star prospect and was drawing interest to many
schools throughout the nation, however the three schools that made the hardest
push were UNLV, Gonzaga, and Washington.
Recruiting changes are not the only things that are taking place. Head coach
Ken Bone, who will be entering his fourth season at Washington State made a
drastic coaching change in hopes to help strengthen the recruiting process.
Jeff Hironaka a close friend of Ken Bone and a three time assistant coach for
WSU has been demoted and will no longer be an assistant coach for Washington
State University, however Hironaka will still have a role on the team. One of
the reasons as to why Hironaka was demoted was because Bone wanted to add a
recruiter who has contacts in places that other recruiters at WSU do not
currently have. Before Hironka was demoted, WSU had three assistant coaches who
essentially recruited most of their players in Australia and Washington; those
are the two big pipelines that WSU recruiting feeds off of. While Ken Bone is
looking for an assistant coach to fill Hironka’s vacant position, its fair to
assume that whoever Ken Bone hires will surely help to diversify WSU basketball
in recruiting areas that WSU has not been opened to.
With recruiting and coaching changes taking place, what does this tell us about
the state of the program? What does this tell us about Ken Bone? Is it time to
think about cougar basketball without Bone as the head coach? After all Bone
has had three full seasons to showcase his coaching abilities and let’s not
forget that for two of those seasons he had Klay Thompson at his disposal to
help lead the Cougar’s toward the NCAA Tournament and he has fell short all
three seasons that has resulted in trips to the NIT and CBI Tournament. With
the recent hire of Mike Leach, athletic director Bill Moos is not afraid to go
big and make a change and although I personally think Ken Bone has this program
heading into the right direction, this upcoming season, given the latest
recruiting class blunders and coaching changes will give all Cougar fans a
great indication of where the program is headed and if they are heading in the
right direction, otherwise Ken Bone may have to be concerned about more then
just recruiting changes and assistant coaching changes.
