Marcus Adams Jr. decommits from Gonzaga
Former Gonzaga All-American Dan Dickau discusses the departure of four-star transfer Marcus Adams Jr.
Transcript
00:00 >>Gonzaga Nation, S.I., Dan Dikow with an unexpected podcast recording late on a Sunday
00:10 evening in August.
00:12 There's been lots of interesting news around Gonzaga recently, whether it be the conference
00:19 realignment talks, whether it's been the addition of Luka Krinovic from Croatia, who is now
00:29 in Spokane getting ready for his freshman season at Gonzaga, whether it is schedule
00:37 updates.
00:38 But we have an update that really wasn't seen coming in any way, shape, or form, and that
00:43 is a recent commit to be a 2B freshman, Marcus Adams Jr., who committed to Gonzaga on July
00:52 22nd, after spending about a month on campus at Kansas, has decided Gonzaga is not the
00:59 place for him and he is no longer going to enroll in fall semester, which seems a little
01:05 odd and a little strange, and it puts a lot of question marks on this young man's career
01:11 when you think about it and you look at it.
01:12 He's a four-star recruit, which honestly, three-star, four-star, doesn't mean a whole
01:18 lot.
01:19 You know, if you're a true five-star, which would be, you know, typically your top 15
01:23 to 20 players, you've got a legitimate chance to be considered a one-and-done, but the three-stars
01:30 and four-stars, in all honesty to me, it's eye of the beholder, or when the evaluators
01:35 saw you, or at times where you play and you can get a little bit more notoriety or be
01:42 seen a little bit more by many evaluators and increase your recruiting in those ways.
01:49 But that being said, from the Southern California area, he was pretty highly recruited, decided
01:55 to go to Kansas, went to summer school in Kansas, and then with the transfer portal
01:59 and all of the movement, within about a month realized that Kansas was not the place that
02:06 he wanted to be at, and so he decided to leave Kansas, reopen his recruiting, which is how
02:15 he ended up at Gonzaga, looked at a number of other schools from my understanding, a
02:20 lot of Southern California schools.
02:23 I am guessing it would have been like your USC's, your UCLA's, your Pepperdine LMU, depending
02:28 on who was involved in his recruitment coming out of high school, but he chose Gonzaga,
02:35 made a couple of big social media posts about it, and now it is, we sit here Sunday, August
02:41 27th, with about a week or so before classes begin and he decides to not come to Gonzaga.
02:49 So I don't think it's a big issue for Gonzaga, to be honest with you.
02:54 The way things were shaping up and he looked at the roster, I don't think there was a lot
02:59 of minutes that were going to be coming his way.
03:03 He was going to have to earn those minutes, and if he's bouncing from Kansas early and
03:07 then he bounces from Gonzaga early, that's a player that might shy away from the competition
03:15 for minutes.
03:16 Maybe he wants the minutes kind of handed to him, and that's something that Coach Pheu
03:20 and staff at Gonzaga are never going to do.
03:23 They're not going to recruit a player and essentially say, "You are going to play this."
03:28 A lot of times what they will do is they share a vision of how they could be used, how they
03:34 could be utilized, how they could have a role, but then the player has to go out and earn
03:39 it.
03:40 One of those things for a young player, sometimes at that age and stage of your career, you
03:47 don't understand just how difficult it is and just how much you have to compete on a
03:54 day-to-day basis.
03:55 So don't know him, but that's one of the things that I see is maybe he was afraid of some
04:01 competition and really having to put his best foot forward every single day and grind it
04:07 out amongst other high-level players.
04:09 Because when you look at the wings for Gonzaga, Steel Venters, the South Korean youngster
04:16 Jun, you're looking at Luka Kronovich maybe now can be looked at as possibly a two at
04:22 times, even though he has some point guard skills to him.
04:26 There's lots of different things that might come into play.
04:31 The question now becomes is because he transfers again so quickly, is he working on a backhanded
04:39 recruitment and trying to get himself aligned to a different school?
04:43 Is he going to ask for an immediate waiver?
04:47 Because that's many times what has to happen if you're going to be able to play really
04:53 quickly.
04:54 So that's going to be something interesting to keep your eye on.
04:56 I have no idea if he's asked for one.
04:59 I don't know.
05:00 It's just something that kind of came to mind when kind of track this story today, followed
05:05 it a little bit.
05:06 But all in all, you know, I don't think it's a blow to Gonzaga.
05:14 I think it's kind of one of those things where it could be addition by subtraction, because
05:18 sometimes if a player isn't going to fit culture wise, personality wise, work ethic wise, and
05:26 I don't know this player.
05:27 I haven't seen him in the gym.
05:28 I haven't met him.
05:29 But these are just all these things that, you know, many times young players don't think
05:34 about when they're going through the process.
05:36 You know, when you're looking for your third school in a matter of about five and a half
05:39 weeks, that makes things very difficult.
05:41 So we'll not be at Gonzaga.
05:45 Will be interesting to see where he lands and if he requests a waiver to be able to
05:51 play immediately.
05:53 So we'll be back with lots of different news with Gonzaga Nation throughout this next week.
05:58 Christian Pedersen and I will have our WCC Weekly.
06:02 We will have our mailbag episodes.
06:05 And we've also got a big interview lined up and scheduled this week with the WCC Commissioner,
06:12 Stu Jackson.
06:13 We'll be recording that later this week, probably release it in a week or so.
06:16 So for Gonzaga Nation SI, don't forget to continue to check in on our website and all
06:22 of our social media channels for all.