Pitt's McGhee, Vandy's Ezeli rare projects who are coming up big
No college coach saw Gary McGhee in high school more than Matt Painter.
I'm pretty sure that's true.
McGhee did, after all, play on the same summer team as Robbie Hummel, E'Twaun Moore and Scott Martin, and I can't imagine anybody watched that team more than Painter because Hummel, Moore and Martin all committed to Purdue that July. Everywhere they went, Painter went. Which means everywhere McGhee went, Painter went, too. So Painter saw McGhee at least 50 times and still never offered the in-state product a scholarship because -- and these are my words, not Painter's, and almost everybody would agree with me -- the big kid just wasn't very good.
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| Gary McGhee has produced 7.1 points and 7.7 rebounds per game for Pitt this season. (Getty Images) |
Dixon now coaches McGhee at Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, 560 miles southwest in Nashville, Vanderbilt's Kevin Stallings is coaching a fellow center from the Class of 2007 who was also omitted from all of the recruiting services' top 100 lists, and not because the recruiting services missed. Rather, it's because Festus Ezeli was, like McGhee, more large than promising and generally not very good.
For proof, consider that Georgia's Mark Fox was asked recently what he recalls about hosting Ezeli on a visit while coaching at Nevada, and Fox told me he remembered the Nigerian being "big." That's basically it. In recruiting terms, such an answer is akin to talking about a woman's personality; it's just a nice way to say there wasn't much else going on. But Stallings enrolled Ezeli anyway, redshirted him and waited.
Four years later, Vanderbilt is benefitting from the decision just like Pitt is profiting from Dixon's similar gamble with McGhee. Now both schools seem capable of advancing deep into the NCAA tournament. If it happens, the emergence of their post projects might be why.
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Big man projects don't typically work.
Let's not even have that debate.
Coaches gamble on size all the time and lose most times. There's an example on just about every college bench, and for a while it looked like McGhee and Ezeli would join the long list of disappointments. Instead, each has developed into an important piece on a nationally relevant team, and nobody should be surprised if one or both end up in the NBA collecting big paychecks that seemed far from realistic when they began their college careers.
Let's start with McGhee.
He averaged about six minutes per game through his first two years, scored 69 points and picked up 49 fouls while playing behind DeJuan Blair, who, oddly, is responsible for McGhee's presence at Pitt. "I saw [McGhee] play against DeJuan in Orlando [in late July 2006]," Dixon said. "He did the best job against DeJuan that I saw anybody do that summer."
So Dixon took him.
Pitt needed size, McGhee, at 6-feet-10, had it, and Dixon saw him play well by accident. So Dixon took him, and many thought it was a reach because most of the coaches who recruited McGhee saw him more than Dixon saw him, and almost nobody projected him to be an impact player at the Big East level. When McGhee did nothing through two years, that made sense. But then Blair turned pro and McGhee emerged. He averaged 6.9 points and 6.8 rebounds last season. He's averaging 7.1 points and 7.7 rebounds this season while serving as a tough interior obstacle for opponents, most recently Syracuse's Rick Jackson.
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| Nigeria native Festus Ezeli is putting up 12.7 points, 6.7 rebounds a game. (Getty Images) |
"If you're ever here before practice, you'll see," Dixon said. "He's the first guy out there shooting free throws. That should answer your question. ... It's hard for [coaches] to see who has desire and who doesn't [during the recruiting process]. But he has it. He's worked his tail off from Day 1. That's a good thing to start with [with anybody]."
Ezeli's career path is similar.
He redshirted his first year of college, then averaged 3.8 points and 2.9 rebounds over the next two seasons while playing behind A.J. Ogilvy. Now Ogilvy is gone and Ezeli is averaging 12.7 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.4 blocks for the Commodores. He posted 18 points and 10 rebounds in a win over Georgia last week, after which Georgia assistant Philip Pearson told me, "Ezeli looks like a different person. It's unbelievable."
"I hear that a lot," Ezeli said, big smile on his face. "A whole lot."
As does Stallings.
"He's been doing this for about a year and a half in practices; it just didn't transfer to the games," Stallings said. "But we knew at some point -- or we hoped at some point -- that he'd start playing in the games like he played in the practices because he would dominate practices last year. He could never quite transfer it to the games before. But this year he's transferred it."
"I just wanted it," Ezeli said. "There's a lot of work that has gone into it."
The lesson: Don't give up on big guys who love the game and work.
Big guys who don't love the game and work?
To hell with them.
They're a total waste of time, and they'll disappointment you every time. But size combined with focus combined with hard work gives almost anybody a chance to succeed in basketball, and McGhee and Ezeli serve as good examples. Once upon a time, the two projects didn't look comfortable or like they belong on a college court at all. But they kept working, kept pushing, and both are now success stories in a book that doesn't feature enough of them.
