READ TODAY'S STORIES AND E-EDITION SUBSCRIBE |  CONTACT US |  SIGN IN
Sports Extra!



SPORTS EXTRA BLOGS

FOR THE RECORD
LOCAL PROS

ALL SPORTS

PHOTOS & VIDEOS

OUTDOORS

FIND A STORY

EMAIL ALERTS

SOCIAL MEDIA

RSS FEEDS

CONTACT US
BUY PHOTOS & PAGES

ADVERTISE ON SPORTS EXTRA


Print story only Print story with comments Email Twitter Facebook Pinterest
Storytelling With Travis Ford
Published: 11/12/2008 5:37 PM
Last Modified: 11/12/2008 5:37 PM

What does new Oklahoma State basketball coach Travis Ford think of his first recruiting class?
He was asked to tell stories about each of his six signees on the first day of the early signing period. This is what he came up with:
--Reger Dowell, point guard, Duncanville, Texas.
Dowell is a top 150 prospect, according to Rivals.com. He committed (and parted ways) with Alabama and Arizona before signing with OSU. Ford said he was spending some time with his college coach, Rick Pitino, when he heard that Dowell was back on the market.
“I literally got up the next morning and went directly to meet with Reger and his family,” Ford said. “I had seen Reger a lot through watching (teammate and fellow OSU signee) Roger (Franklin) play at Duncanville. He was the combo-type guard we needed. We are going to need another point guard to come in and play. I had seen him play this summer, but he was hurt a lot this summer, which I think probably hurt his ranking a little bit.... We had seen him play at his best ability, which nobody else had seen because nobody else was recruiting him because he was committed. When we saw him, he was one of the top point guards in the country, but he was hurt all summer and nobody really knows it.”
--Roger Franklin, forward, Duncanville, Texas.
Franklin is ranked 43rd nationally (and ninth among small forwards) by Scout.com.
“Roger probably recruited us more than we recruited him early because I didn’t know Roger,” Ford said. “He had been to a lot of games and I hadn’t seen Roger play, but I was receiving phone calls from him. (OSU assistant coach Chris) Ferguson knew him because he had come to some games and went to the Kansas game last year. He kind of grew up an Oklahoma State fan.”
Ford told Franklin this: “I’ll have to wait and evaluate you. I know you have got a great reputation, but I want to evaluate you first this summer.”
Then Ford liked what he saw and heard. “The first time I saw him, the first thing their coach said was he is a winner,” Ford said. “He will make everybody else on the team better. He is a big-time winner. He is probably going to be the fan-favorite of everybody. He has just got one of the most incredible personalities I have ever been around. And then the sucker can play. He can shoot threes. He can post up. He will learn your offense. He does all the intangibles you want your players to do.
“As the summer kept going along, his list started to grow and I got a little bit concerned because I thought maybe we could get it done early, then I thought maybe I dropped the ball here. UCLA and Michigan State and Indiana and everybody were just beating his door down. But I think the way we recruited him and the way we showed him the attention and working as hard as we could and then I think his love of Oklahoma State played a big role in it as well. He is another kid that cancelled a lot of visits because he was committed to come to Oklahoma State.”
--Fred Gulley, point guard, Fayetteville, Ark.
Gulley was named the Arkansas Gatorade player of the year as a junior last season. He is ranked as the nation’s 16th-best point guard by Scout.com.
“Fred, we got a call from his dad when I first got the job,” Ford said.
The dad wanted to know if the Cowboys were going to continue to recruit his son. He said the former staff had invited the point guard to come to a game.
Ford’s response? “We’re recruiting all point guards at this point. Absolutely. We lose our starting point guard and he’s probably going to play 35 minutes a game, so definitely.”
Ford checked out Gulley’s background and liked the person and the player.
“I talked to a lot of people and he came on an unofficial visit and committed very quickly after that,” Ford said. “It was great to have that one done because it is such an important position in our system. He is 6-2 or 6-3. It’s not like he’s just a small point guard. He can play different positions as well.”
--Karron Johnson, forward, Mount Zion Christian Academy, Durham, N.C.
Johnson is ranked as a top 50 player by Rivals.com and Scout.com. He was recruited by OSU assistant coach Butch Pierre when Pierre was at LSU.
Said Ford, “As coach Pierre started learning my system a little bit more, he said, ‘hey, this kid is perfect. He is what we need, first of all, and he fits your system.’ ”
Ford believes Johnson has NBA talent, but needs to work on consistency.
“He is a guy who understands his strengths and weaknesses and has talked a whole lot to us about things he wants to improve on,” the coach said. “He has seen our individual improvement program. He is somebody that has been one of the top players in the country for a couple of years. He wanted to come to a place where he could get better as an individual, get better in the game, off the court, everything about it, and will have a chance to play right away in a system that is going to fit him. He was obviously getting recruited from some (top-level) schools, but he felt this was the best fit for him.”
--Ray Penn, point guard, Travis High School, Richmond Texas.
Penn was ranked as the nation’s 29th-best player by Hoopmasters.com and is rated as the country’s ninth-best point guard by Rivals.com. His stock rose after he averaged 35.8 points during a summer tournament in Las Vegas.
“He wasn’t a guy we were looking at until he went absolutely bonkers in Las Vegas, in the No. 1 tournament of the summer with the best competition of the summer on a national level,” Ford said. “He didn’t play in any other tournaments except this one.... People were trying to double- and triple-team him and he was shooting from 30 feet. Then driving to the hole and getting 40 points and 10 assists a game.
“I told our staff that’s a kid that can excel in our system. He will be able to get up threes. He will have the freedom to break his man down. He can play multiple positions. Even though he is 5-9 or 5-10, his natural position is the two-guard spot. He can handle the ball a lot and, again, we got him down on an unofficial visit and luckily he committed kind of early and came on his official visit and that’s when we solidified it with him and his mom on the official visit. He’s a kid that just really came from nowhere because he had never really been on the summer circuit. He had done a lot of summer school and things like that. And then he just burst onto the scene. But if you go back and look at what he has done in high school, he has averaged 30 points a game, even in high school.”
--Torin Walker, center, Northside High School, Columbus, Ga.
Walker is rated as the nation’s 14th-best center prospect by ESPNU. He averaged 17 points, 14 rebounds and five blocks as a junior.
“We watched Torin Walker this summer very, very closely,” Ford said. “He’s a guy that we were not recruiting until the July period. We saw him on one occasion and he dominated, literally dominated, one of the best big men in the country. Dominated him. It wasn’t even close. Wow. That’s impressive.
“We watched him again in another tournament. Same thing, against a top 75 big man. It wasn’t even close. He dominated the kid. Then we continued to watch him and continued to watch him and every time out, he got better and dominated guys who maybe have a better reputation. He just literally dominated them.
“We recruited him harder than any big man we recruited. We recruited some names that people know about right here. We didn’t recruit any big man as hard as we recruited him because he was the guy I wanted. He came on his visit and committed. He canceled visits to Kentucky, to Georgia, to Auburn, which is 35 minutes from his home. Everybody started seeing the same things we saw in him late in the period. He is a guy that is going to have to come in and play. No question we needed depth because of the uncertainty of Teeng (Akol’s eligibility). Having Karron and having Torin in there fill a huge void and those two can step in and play right away.”



Reader Comments 1 Total
Chris Conn (4 years ago)
Great work, Jimmy. I must have missed this when it first appeared. Excellent work.
1 comments displayed


To post comments on tulsaworld.com, you must be an active Tulsa World print or digital subscriber and signed into your account.


Games People Play

Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

Follow Jimmie Tramel on Twitter

Subscribe to this blog


Archive

 
Jimmie Tramel's Blog Archive:

2/2013  1/2013  12/2012  11/2012  10/2012  9/2012  
8/2012  7/2012  6/2012  5/2012  4/2012  3/2012  
2/2012  1/2012  12/2011  11/2011  10/2011  9/2011  
8/2011  7/2011  6/2011  5/2011  4/2011  3/2011  
2/2011  1/2011  12/2010  11/2010  10/2010  9/2010  
8/2010  7/2010  6/2010  5/2010  4/2010  3/2010  
2/2010  1/2010  12/2009  11/2009  10/2009  9/2009  
8/2009  7/2009  6/2009  5/2009  4/2009  3/2009  
2/2009  1/2009  12/2008  11/2008  10/2008  9/2008  
8/2008  7/2008  6/2008  5/2008  4/2008  3/2008  
2/2008  1/2008  12/2007  11/2007  10/2007  9/2007  
8/2007  7/2007  6/2007  5/2007  4/2007  3/2007  
2/2007  1/2007  12/2006  11/2006  10/2006  9/2006  
8/2006  





Home | Contact Us | Search | Subscribe | Customer Service | About | Advertise
Copyright © 2013, World Publishing Co. All rights reserved.