VU announces signings of West, Lang, and Roberts

[AuricGoldfinger]

Vanderbilt men’s basketball head coach Jerry Stackhouse announced on Wednesday the signing of Isaiah West, Carter Lang and JaQualon Roberts to National Letters of Intent. The trio will be freshmen on the 2023-24 squads.

Last year’s recruiting class – currently Vanderbilt freshmen – ranked in the top 25 nationally, and this year’s group ranks No. 24 in the nation by ESPN.

https://vucommodores.com/three-additions/

[underdog74]

Stack continues to build a solid program. This should be a great class.

[VandyManners]

Very nice...

[charlestonalum]

Onward and upward.

[cjdore]

I am thrilled to see Coach Stack on the recruiting trail. It seemed early here he depended on others to recruit. When he first came here I thought his greatest quality would be recruiting. Imagine him going to a gym to see some players play and their coach saying Coach Jerry Stackhouse is in the building and would like to see players A and B after the game.

[Nashmann]

Can any of these guys shoot a basketball?

[Versus75]

I'm not ragging on Stackhouse. I still feel he is good for our program (wish I could figure out what happened in the Southern Miss game). I actually thought Stack would quit Vanderbilt after we parted ways with his G-League mentor, Malcolm Turner. But he stayed and he developed players like Pippen and Wright to play above their ratings.

As for the 2023 class, I can't say how good it will be. Since I've been at Vanderbilt, we've had the Garland, Shittu, Nesmith class -- which was great but under-utilized; the VBK/Compton/Ligon/Fowler class which might have been 3-4 4-stars had today's ratings been in place; the F-Troop (5+4+4?); DeMarre/Shan/Gordon in 2004; Festus/Ogilvy/Andre Walker in 2007; Jeffrey Taylor & Co. 2008 (4 4-stars); Wade Baldwin & Co. 2014 (2 4-stars + 3 3-stars); the solid Class of 2022; and several with one or two top-notch players (see John Jenkins or Damian Jones/Luke Kornet).

How does a class with three 3-star players rank up there?

~~~
The 247-composite currently shows this as a National #40-ranked recruiting class, 7th of 14 among SEC teams -- as of this moment. Good, but nowhere close to our best classes in the past.

To their credit, a look at offer lists show that all of these might be "high-3-star" players.

Carter Lang: Illinois, Texas A&M, Virginia Tech, Ole Miss, SMU, Stanford
JaQualon Roberts: Indiana, Butler, Iowa, Marquette, West Virginia, Virginia Tech
Isaiah West: Xavier, Wake Forest, Virginia Tech, Ole Miss, Nebraska

No Blue-Bloods here other than possibly Indiana from days gone by. And why are teams like Rice, IUPUI and Kennesaw State in the mix? (Could be the schools offered but the players were never high on them.)



~~~ Considering that many schools will sign more players and push their class ratings above that of Vanderbilt, for me to consider this a strong class I feel Vanderbilt needs at least one more player of similar or stronger caliber.

[quasidiehardvandyfan]

Good post and good questions.

I think it's likely these are "high 3 star" guys as you said.

I may be wrong on this, but I believe Isaiah West was ranked in the top 40 (a high four star) after his sophomore year. He had an injury his Jr year so he wasn't playing much (if at all?), hence him moving down in the rankings. If he recovered from his injury and his progression hasn't stagnated, he should move back up in the rankings by the end of his senior season.

Roberts seems to be a real talent, so hopefully he also moves up in the rankings. His recruitment started with IUPUI (makes sense for a less competitive school to offer early), but picked up steam last fall continuing into the summer.

Given I have only watched highlight reels of all these guys, no idea how they'll pan out.

The Baldwin Class was pretty damn solid, so don't think it's that good.
Baldwin, LaChance, Roberson were all legit SEC starters, plus Fisher Davis and Shelton Mitchell who you could also argue fit that bill.

Foster/Demarre Carroll/Gordon would have been epic had Carroll stayed, so that's too high of an expectation.

Too soon to talk about Garland/Shittu/Nesmith, but that's certainly not comparable.

The 2009 Class was pretty good for us. Taylor, Tinsley, Ezeli, Goulbourne, Tchiengang. An uneducated guess, but I think an optimistic outlook would be West/JQ/Lang being comparable in efficacy to that class if it was just Taylor/Tinsley/Goulbourne. Taylor/Tinsley were effective year 1, so if it panned out that way, I think we'd be happy?

Still sounds like a team that needs a few years before they're seriously competitive, which is my gripe with this rebuild. It SEEMS like it's going to take 6-7 years of CJS building (who I'm hoping can make it work, but losing faith) before we are in a place to regularly be in the tournament conversation/in the discussion for top 5 teams in the SEC. And there's a lot that needs to go right for that to be the case.