UConn beatwriter Desmond Conner reported yesterday that Husky recruit Michael Nebrich had received a negative recruiting email from a member of the Boston College staff. That caused howls of righteous indignation from UConn fans, and demands that Conner produce evidence from BC fans, which he subsequently did.
Mike:
We are hosting a one-day skill clinic on July 8. Would love to see you there. I know you're committed to UConn but You will have a new coaching staff there by next January. You have a plan for that?
A BC assistant is claiming that UConn's coaching staff will soon be leaving for another program. Randy Edsall is certainly in demand, but he's stood the course in Storrs up to this point. Considering that Rutgers has absolutely lost recruits because other programs told recruits that Greg Schiano was going to Penn State, I can totally empathize. Unfortunately, negative recruiting is pretty much a fact of life, so you just have to learn to tune it out. While a little slimy, that email doesn't really compare with some of the more underhanded stuff that comes out of the SEC on a daily basis.
This story definitely raises another issue as well. Once Conner posted his first story, he and Nebrich were stuck between a rock and a hard place. They were being accused of making the tale up, so Conner then went and posted the email (without revealing the name of the coach in question). Of course, those same critics will now probably slam the pair for sharing private correspondence now. Either way, you can't win.
Well, maybe we can get some entertainment value out of the whole affair, and hopefully bog down both sides in an unproductive stalemate. Here, let me throw gasoline on the fire with some complete speculation. Conner isn't releasing the name of the BC assistant in question, but I posit that it's Mike Siravo for the following three reasons.
1. Siravo is BC's recruiting coordinator.
2. From quickly glancing at past recruiting classes, he appears to be the assistant on staff charged with recruiting Virginia.
3. While it's been scrubbed from his current Rivals profile, a Google cache shows that as of several months back Siravo was listed on the site as the BC assistant charged with recruiting Nebrich.
edit: wree, posted this in a hurry this morning and fixed some atrocious grammar.