gloger rumors

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SoCalHoops Recruiting News

Rumors Of Gloger's Continued
Recruitment Are Still Rampant--(June 9, 1999)

Today we got an e-mail from a friend alerting us to an article posted over on Clark Francis' Hoop Scoop about Spencer Gloger. You'll remember that Spencer originally committed to Princeton last fall, and then changed his mind, and continued to be recruited by both Princeton and Oregon. Ultimately, it was only in the week or two prior to the end of the late spring signing period that Spencer verbally committed to UCLA, and then he didn't sign a LOI by the end of the period, instead opting to sign a grant-in-aid (aka scholarship) agreement. Lest you doubt that he in fact signed such an agreement, here's the link to the official UCLA Basketball website, which contains the official press release about his signing. And the UCLA folks can't just make this stuff up, because unless a player actually signs, they are prohibited from commenting about a future player (unless he's a walk-on, and even then, until the student enrolls for classes the school cannot comment). And those are NCAA rules, not just the rules under the National Letter of Intent program.

So we checked out the article over at the Hoop Scoop, and lo and behold, the Hoop Scoop is now reporting that Dave Schultz, one of their contributors is reporting (ok, so it's double-hearsay) that "the recruitment of 6'-6" Spencer Gloger from Rancho Santa Margarita. . . still isn't done yet."

According to the Hoop Scoop, Spencer's father is alluding to the fact that "things could still change, despite the fact that it's his [Spencer's] life long dream to play at UCLA. Both his father and his high school coach have pointed out that nothing is binding with UCLA."

Well, that's true. Assuming that his father and his high school coach said what Schultz attributes to them, it's a fact, there's nothing "binding." In fact that's the whole point of signing a scholarship agreement instead of a letter of intent. But we know of nothing, repeat nothing, which has so dramatically changed between now and the time when Spencer signed his scholarship agreement which would actually cause him to reconsider playing for the Bruins. A scholarship agreement is not a National Letter of Intent, and does not carry with it any penalty if the student enrolls somewhere else. But we're highly skeptical of this kind of report, and really wouldn't place too much credence in it, at least not from the discussions we've had with Spencer's father in the past when discussing his recruitment.

We attempted to reach Spencer today to find out more about this report, but we were unable to reach him. Nevertheless, until we hear something directly from the Gloger family, we'd be absolutely amazed if, as is suggested in the Hoop Scoop report, other schools, especially other Pac-10 schools, were really continuing to recruit Spencer, particularly the two schools which he previously rejected, Princeton and Oregon. In fact the article in question also notes that Princeton head Bill Carmody, "who had some great quotes in an article yesterday by Harvey Yavener in the Trenton Times" apparently would never continue to recruit a player after he has committed to another school: "'We honor the National Letter-of-Intent, although we don't have to,' says Carmody. 'When Todd Billett said he was going to Rutgers after we recruited him as hard as we could, we accepted that and didn't pursue it further, although legally we could. It seems to me the only proper thing would be for other schools to honor the Ivy League's early admissions program. Maybe we're shooting too high. Losing Gloger to UCLA, Billet to Rutgers, and Will Johnson to North Carolina. Those major confrerence, those full rides to the big time, they're hard to go up against.'"

The article in question is posted over at Hoop Scoop in the visitor's section, so it's readily available to the public as well as to subscribers. Read it for yourself, and see if you find any substance to the report that Spencer's recruitment still continues. We know that we couldn't really find any, but then, if things were always crystal clear and not subject to interpretation, well, it would be a different world, wouldn't it?