A followup of ex-Saluki Kevin Dillard

A couple premium articles have been posted on what's up with Kevin Dillard....Illinois' Mr. Basketball back in 2008. He was touted as one of the best if not perhaps THE best incoming recruit in the Missouri Valley in decades....
a kid who would be a sure superstar and lead SIU to Valley titles and beyond...
I have never been much of a Kevin Dillard fan and interestingly, now a ton of Saluki fans have moved over to my corner in this argument.
Nobody knows all the truth, but we can get a few bits of info from the comments Dillard makes and of course we have our own eyes that we can evaluate what's going on.

Let it be noted that with Dillard getting all the playing time a kid would ever want, and literally being allowed to start at SIU from day one & run the team to his liking....
the Salukis have had arguably TWO OF THE WORST seasons, back to back in 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 than they have ever had!!
In other words...all the great hopes that came with Kevin Dillard were almost the 180 degree opposite of what happened....
so I guess you have to understand why and what happened..........

These new subscription articles shed a little light...and what it boils down to is that in order to land Dillard out of his Chicago area surroundings (and the ego and attitude that goes with that most times) and in order to please Kevin Dillard, Dillard's father, and their "handlers", what Chris Lowery had to do is a head coach's WORST NIGHTMARE!!!
Head coach Chris Lowery basically had to lock his lips onto Kevin Dillard's butt and turn over full control of the team for the next two years in order to try to please the Dillards...and his actions are now obviously proven to have been disastrous!!!
Of course, this action backfired BIG TIME and sunk SIU to the bottom of the Valley. Lowery obviously shouldn't have done it...but that's like telling Tiger Woods...he shouldn't have done what he did....
Lowery probably knew the consequences, but lusted for the top level talent that Dillard brought. He wanted the potential GLORY that would go with winning big time and having such a talented player.....and took the gamble...not too different than what Dana Altman did in landing P'Allen Stinnett, which - by the way - also ruined his Bluejays' team!!
Whoa....so landing kids of this talent level is really a gamble!! But it is obviously not the talent that's the self-exploding bomb, it is the attitude....so that's what you have to watch out for...
If a kid is recruited and the coach caves in to the kid and his handlers' demands or turns the reins of the team over to the player, then it is a recipe for terrible disaster (are you listening Tim Jankovich??)

Here is one of the articles on IllinoisHSPreps.com........
http://hsillinois.scout.com/2/970252.html

In this story which is mostly based on the things Kevin Dillard and his dad say in an interview as they are visiting Alabama to decide where to transfer to....

He says this about the reason he left SIU --
"The reason I decided to leave Southern Illinois is it was nothing about the team. I didn’t see the team going in a good direction. I felt before I came there the coach told me one thing and we ended up doing another so I felt it was in the best interest for myself to look to go elsewhere to finish my career"

"Dillard spent last season in a half-court system geared to take advantage of Eugene Teague’s inside presence. Full-court man-to-man pressure was the defense employed."

Then after this - Dillard's father goes on to rip into SIU even more, and say how Kevin, Jr., just needs a coach who will trust him and let him do his thing, then boasts about how unselfish Kevin, Jr. is.

What a strange spin!!!!!
Kevin Dillard is not one of the MOST unselfish players I have ever witnessed, in fact, kinda the opposite, and I have been saying so - much to the chagrin of the Saluki fans - for at least two years!!

But - seriously - Chris Lowery changed his entire offensive style this past year, just to accomodate Dillard. They went away from their successful clutch-and-grab, slow-down style - looking for good shots and inside shots - to a wide-open, run-and-gun style, just to make Dillard happy, but all it did was make him more selfish, and cause SIU to lose more - even to really bad teams!!!
Lowery HAS TO BE happy to be rid of Dillard, and he even boasted at their postseason banquet about how he plans to get back to "SIU basketball" next season, with a more slowed down offense, and tighter defense now that Dillard is gone.

Despite playing a more wide open style of offense, check out Dillard's numbers from his freshman to his sophomore season-
http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/players/81375
....
his scoring average stayed the same, despite SIU scoring a lot more ppg.
His shooting percentages went down, especially his 3-point percentage, because he was taking a lot more bad shots.

Nope - you'll never convince me that SIU benefitted from landing Dillard...
it's quite clear Dillard wanted this to be KEVIN DILLARD'S TEAM and not the Salukis' team.


From an article out of Alabama --
Dillard says this about his wanting to find a new place to play...
"I didn’t take recruiting as seriously as I do now. I was young and just wanted to make a decision as quickly as possible to be ready for my senior year in high school. Unfortunately it didn’t work out for me,” he said."

So he sorta says he was duped into going to SIU - and that had he taken it seriously, he'd have done a whole lot better for himself...and not been stuck at SIU!
...you can just feel the ego .... never actually admitting he bears a little responsibility for all that's happened!!!

Here's more from the Dillards...
"If it was individual accolades Kevin was after, I’m sure he would be fine anywhere. Individually he has done fine but it’s not an individual sport,” he explained. “He wants to win and he wants to get better. It’s kind of like putting a shark in a pond. He won’t grow. If you put a gold fish in the ocean he’ll get as big as he is allowed to.” Mr. Dillard went on to further clarify the circumstances with no disrespect to SIU using the analogy “It’s kind of like that first girlfriend that didn’t work out.”"

Four schools were at the top of Dillard's list ..Alabama, Baylor, Nebraska, and Dayton. But now in this latest story he says he's narrowed the field to just Dayton & Alabama (those may just be the only ones left who would need someone bad enough to risk taking Dillard - I know Baylor's Scott Drew isn't that stupid!)
Dillard claims he has solid scholarship offers from both schools.
Let's see how desperate these schools are and how much they cave to Dillard in order to get him...I think in the end the smart coaches will know what's going on....and I don't doubt the good ones will watch tape and maybe even give a call to a couple of ther Valley coaches including Lowery to get a better take on the risks.....

Kevin Dillard says he will visit Dayton on Tuesday, May 18th and tentatively has a scheduled trip to Alabama on June 1st with intentions of announcing the decision by June 5th. His Dad will accompany him to Alabama.
Also in the article, Dillard boasts about being the leader in the Valley in assists, but technically he was NOT! Clevin Hannah had more assists, but Dillard did have a slightly better apg average - but only in the category where you include all those cupcake non-conference teams SIU played against, including even D-II opponents and a handful of 300+ RPI opponents.
(SIU's non-conference slate was rated at around the 320th worst in D-I)
Hannah and at least two other Valley PG's had way better assist-to-turnover ratios, and if one actually looks at the conference stats, where the weakness of all those softie SIU non-conference opponents is weeded out...
then Wichita's Clevin Hannah is WAY better...
In conference play, Hannah averaged 4.9 apg to Dillard's greatly reduced numbers in the Valley of just 4.4 apg. In fact in league play, ISU's LLoyd Phillips also had more assists than Dillard, and even Sammy Maniscalco was only a couple behind Dillard.
In the MVC Assist-to-Turnover category, then Dillard isn't even close to being the leader... FIVE other Valley PG's including Sam Maniscalco are considerably better numbers-wise.
Dillard's final comment in this interview is this...
"I just like to do whatever it takes to win. I want to win no matter what the cost. Whatever I need to do in that game to win, I’m willing to do it,” he declared."

Wow, that statement is a stretch....and in two years of watching Dillard at SIU, I'd say the truth is about 100% the opposite of that comment!