Most will recall the issues and trouble, the cheating and fraud, and the criminal charges and jail time surrounding one of the most storied basketball programs in the nation, Vashon HS, St. Louis.
Their head coach, Floyd Irons, who was as legendary as any here in Illinois has ended up disgraced, humiliated by the revelations of cheating, lying, fraud, and he's ended up in jail.
But - what ever happened to all those great, nationally rated players who led Vashon to 10 state championships and national rankings.
Many were pegged as certain stars, top Division I talent, and can't-miss prospects.
At their prime in the state of Illniois, even Manual HS didn't eclipse the glories of the Vashon HS program during their run in Missouri.
http://bradleyfans.com/vb/showthread.php?t=8594&highlight=vashon
Vashon HS had many players who were top talents...and in fact they were such top talents, that their coach Floyd Irons was willing to cheat and destroy his entire career and reputation to get them and steal those players from surrounding districts...
Anyway...players like Bobby Hill, Johnny Hill, Leon Powell, Dwayne Polk, Derron Hobbs, Cornelius Walker, James Washington, and many others were touted as really top D-I prospects
Well..enough time has gone by and it's time to check and see how many of those Vashon players who were so good that coach Floyd Irons was willing to go to jail to land them and win state titles with them...here's the followup...
I noted the box score of last night's SEMO game and noted that Johnny Hill is still playing at SEMO...SEMO is quite possibly the worst D-I team in the country...they are bad....Last night they lost - to Arkansas State 73-49. Johnny Hill is a 5th year senior.. almost 24 years old...he's the kind of player that if he was a stud in high school, then by now he should be a strong, senior leader and ought to be a major contributor, at least on a team as weak and as needy as SEMO...right? Nope..he barely plays...just a few minutes of time per game, even against teams like Arkansas State!
He has a career shooting pct of just a bit over 30%, and 3 ppg...And I don't want to be accused of picking on the other Vashon kids, but none of them have done anything at the D-I level...how did they all fail so badly??
Maybe someone should look into why it happened and who robbed those kids of such great potential! The latest one..Leon Powell, is also coincidentally at SEMO - after a long route through preps school and juco......
Powell really was a talented kid - even Bradley was very interested in him back in high school along with a lot of top D-I programs and BCS schools.
But so far after 4 games at SEMO he hasn't played a minute and hasn't scored a point. (he may be injured?) So I guess the question is, why have the Vashon kids done so poorly? I really can't find one who ended up actually being much of a contributor anywhere - not at the top level or even at the mid-major or low-major level.
Was it the coaching or mentoring they had in high school?....is it just bad luck...Vashon had the talent and success copmparable to Simeon or to Manual in the 1990's...and many of those kids went on the fine D-I success..... I know head coach Floyd Irons got off easy, although he still served some time.......I think this is one of the truly sad stories in HS ball.......
Had all those Manual kids done so poorly, flunked out, or flopped, I am sure we'd be seeing someone called on the carpet!
But the only mention found recently of Vashon are police reports of fights at the school, and the hope of maybe at least one of the Vashon kids at SEMO actually playing and scoring some.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sports/stories.nsf/othersports/story/E76D6631D54410EF8625766E000FB105?OpenDocument
http://www.fox2now.com/ktvi-slps-mace-incident-reports-111009,0,730165.story
http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/dailyrft/2008/02/basketball_by_the_book_floyd_i_1.php
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Floyd Irons is really an enigma...the guy was a legend for supposedly being honorable and upright, yet note what he did to sidestep the rules and win state titles...
This involves recruiting Bobby Hill and his brother Johnny from another school district to fraudulently move into the Vashon district and play illegally for Irons' team...
"Irons went to visit the Hills at their home in the spring of 2002. The boys lived in a basement, Irons said, suggesting it was not a great environment. "[…I]t touched me," he told MSHSAA.
Irons said he and the Hills' father agreed that the boys would move into the Vashon attendance area and play for the Wolverines if Irons could help find the father a job and a place to live.
With Noll's help, Irons said, a job became available for the father at Bartolino's Restaurant in south St. Louis. Irons said he found an apartment for the Hills in a housing complex just a few blocks from Vashon...
Irons said the boys' father reneged on the agreement and did not move to the apartment or take the job at Bartolino's.
Irons said he and the Hills' father "went round and round about why he wasn't living up to the portion that he said he was gonna live up to," according to the transcript. "I, you know, didn't feel as though [redacted] should have been penalized totally by that. I got in to the picture, it was my responsibility now."
Irons paid the $460-per-month rent for the apartment, where the brothers, then in ninth and tenth grade, lived alone, according to the transcript. The utilities were registered in the name of one of Mike Noll's friends, Irons said, so that there would be "no connection" to Irons.
Irons also said he paid for the boys' food and clothes, and made sure they had beds and a television set. He also gave them a car, a blue 1985 Cadillac DeVille.
Teachers and others who were close to the basketball program sometimes contributed food and spending money for the boys, Irons told MSHSAA officials. He said he and others would stop by the apartment every so often to check on the boys.
Irons also said that he found a woman who would clean the place and make Sunday dinner for the Hill brothers for the year-plus that they lived there.
Irons said his assistant coaches were aware of the boys' living arrangement, and that former principal Dorothy Ludgood, who died in 2003, knew Irons was helping the Hills with amenities.
Irons said he knew the boys' transfers and living arrangement violated MSHSAA rules. "[I]f I had to do the situation over again the way it was done I would do it again…," he said.
Irons also said he tried to get the boys' father to relinquish guardianship to him but that the father would not agree to it."
"Floyd Irons personally spent between $25,000 and $30,000 to house, feed and clothe (the Hills) the two Vashon High School basketball players during a five-year period"
Despite the players being willing participants to all this cheating and fraud, and gaining tremendously from it...they were never held accountable.
To this day, this episode ranks with the Baylor scandal and the OJ Mayo/Reggie Bush scandal as the worst coaching corruption I have seen or heard of.
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BTW-- if you want to read more on scandal...here's one the media may just NOT be telling you about...
Scientists are INTENTIONALLY manipulating their data and falsifying it to strengthen their phony arguments and are getting help from the biased media...
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017451/climategate-how-the-msm-reported-the-greatest-scandal-in-modern-science/
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1213483&srvc=business&position=recent
http://www.poligazette.com/2009/11/21/cooking-the-books-on-climate/
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/11/20/hack-attack-global-warming-exposed-globaloney
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In fact, come to think of it, maybe the St. Louis area high schoolers are overrated all the time!
As I think about it, I can easily come up with numerous other clear examples. A couple years ago ther McCluer kids finished int he tital game two years in a row...winning once...but the three top McCluer kids were all labelled top D-I players (kinda funny a team with 3 top D-I players got beaten out of the state title) and yet, none has done much thus far at the D-I level. One of them was rated 4-Star, as high as #29 player in the nation, yet the three kids combined (Torres Roundtree, Femi John, and Anthony Booker) have all underperformed thus far, and into their 2nd college season still haven't accounted for much more than 100 points TOTAL between the THREE of them in their college careers.
Sure there's still time, but it's pretty apparent there might have been some overrating going on here.
Likewise, a St. Louis area kid named John Brandenburg got all kinds of hype in high school - can't miss, sure-fire star...4-STAR rectuit...
and he was recruited by all the big boys, landing first at Stanford...then flip-flopping and going to Virginia.
Again, I know there's still time for the kid to blossom, but so far, after a full year at UVa, he was barely able to even break into the practice rotation and now has left there as well, scoring a total of 8 points in his entire freshman season. Now he's at low-D-I Colgate, just maybe he can crack the lineup.
There are others...Josh Harrelson, etc...who all ended up being only an afterthought once they got to the D-I level...
At least back when David Thirdkill played prep ball in St. Louis, those kids developed and made a splash in college!!
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