"Oh, God!" - Trey Lyles, Recruiting, and Related Renderings
by
Published on 11-05-2013 12:38 PM
Trey Lyles, a top 10 national recruit, Scout.com's # 1 ranked power forward in 2014, being heavily recruited by everyone in the nation, committed to the University of Kentucky today, choosing the Cats over Louisville. That was widely expected up until about fifteen minutes before his announcement, at which point, the internet broke.
The best I can determine, Brian Snow of Scout.com heard "something." He tweeted, "At Trey Lyles announcement. All I am going say is on election day Kentucky is a RED state."
Snow followed that up with, "Not betting the mortgage by any means. Only could go with what I was told. will be interesting. Scout.com has conflicting info."
Very reasonable, and no problem with what he tweeted. Just what he heard, and nothing more. Didn't claim complete accuracy, and acknowledged that his own company (Evan Daniels, most likely) had conflicting information.
At this point, I was reminded of the 1977 George Burns-John Denver movie, "Oh, God."
But let me back up. Word had it, from pretty reliable sources, that Trey Lyles committed to Kentucky three days ago. In fact, Lyles confirmed that today at his announcement. I was aware of this word, and sat back, fat and happy, content in the knowledge that I had "inside information," and that it was definitive.
But how sure was I when this misdirection developed? In the movie, "Oh God!" John Denver was in court, defending the absurd--but truthful, per the movie--notion that he had seen, and spoken to God (George Burns) in a slander trial. At trial, he called, as his next witness, "the Lord, God."
Naturally, nobody appeared, at first. Denver argued that in that instant, in that millisecond, everyone in the court felt that God could have appeared, and everyone waited to see if the improbable would appear, and they all felt that anticipation as if it might occur. Because of this, he argued, he was entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
And that's where I was. With the internet near-broken, Snow and others* waffling, I waited for the improbable to occur. I typed on a thread, "Lyles committed to Kentucky three days ago," and began a post explaining why the recent posts were not only implausible, but completely false.
And then I deleted it without posting, waiting for that "Oh, God!" moment to arrive to sucker punch me in the gut.
Fortunately for Kentucky and Kentucky fans, it never arrived. But the mere fact it could have arrived points out the wildly unreliable nature of all things related to recruiting, and even moreso, to predicting recruiting. While we hang on every word of the experts, and have our own, the truth is, sometimes we just don't know. And won't know, until George Burns materializes in the witness chair, "so help me, me."
*Others included those like Matt Jones of Kentucky Sports Radio, who was surely possessed of the same or superior iniformation that I had. Jones immediately waffled after Snow's tweet, saying that "Count me as not as confident on Lyles as last night." After Evan Daniels posted that he still expected Lyles to commit to Kentucky, Jones similarly said he would still bet on Kentucky. But both were not nearly as strong as even earlier today. Both were doing their job, and neither are to blame for this phenomenon. I include them just for reference purposes.
Articles by Category
KSR Twitter Feed
vBulletin Message