We’re still a couple of weeks away from Halloween, but I can’t remove from my head the image of Johnny Jones wearing blue robes and a pointy hat waving around a magic wand.
Consider the wizardry Jones has done since arriving in Baton Rouge. He took a struggling program that hasn’t made an NCAA Tournament since 2009, threw a sheet over it and one season later pulled a top-10 recruiting class and a team that can legitimately contend in the Southeastern Conference out of his hat.
In one offseason, Jones has gone from a mismatched collection of undersized players and one oversized tuba player, to a long and fast roster loaded with a number of future NBA players. More importantly, he’s injected life into a program that didn’t have a pulse under former coach Trent Johnson.
Quite a transformation, but Jones pulled off his greatest magic trick yet on Tuesday morning when the Tigers landed a commitment from class of 2015 — stud Ben Simmons.
The 6-foot-10-inch Australian power forward is the No. 4 recruit in the country, according to ESPN.com. Jones and company beat out basketball factories Kentucky, Duke and Kansas for his services.
Think about that for a second. Coaches like John Calipari, Bill Self and Mike Krzyzewski don’t need to recruit; their programs are at a level where they can practically select what players they want.
Those three coaches essentially divvy up the top high school players amongst themselves. They combined to claim eight of the top 10 recruits in the country from the class of 2013.
Jones signed Jarell Martin last year, so Simmons isn’t his first elite signing. But it is easily the most impressive.
Martin is a Baton Rouge native that Jones simply needed to convince to stay home. Simmons is an Aussie playing at Montverde Academy in Florida, but Jones got him to commit a year early nonetheless.
The most logical explanation is that Jones is in fact a wizard.
Obviously, the magician never reveals his secrets, especially to the media, but a closer look at Simmons’ commitment reveals that it isn’t as supernatural as it appears on first glance. The real magic trick may be as simple as having some inside ties.
LSU assistant coach David Patrick is the prized recruit’s godfather and played alongside his father, Dave Simmons, during his career in Australia. Another possible factor is that, earlier this week Jones signed Simmons’ current teammate, three-star class of 2014 point guard Jalyn Patterson.
Familiar faces should make Baton Rouge feel like home to Simmons, and I think that made all the difference in Jones stealing him out from under programs that, frankly, have been on another level than LSU for a long time.
So maybe Jones isn’t a basketball sorcerer. Perhaps he is instead a skilled architect, setting the foundation to bring LSU hoops to the upper echelon of the programs he beat out to get Simmons.
Jones already brought in one elite recruiting class, and with Simmons on board, there will be many more coming down the pipeline.
It would take something supernatural for basketball to unseat football as the elite program at LSU. Jones would need to be an actual wizard in order to make that happen, but I think he’d settle for opening up a basketball factory that gives Les Miles and company a run for their money.