Yeah... I took some heat from the Pepperdine fans a few weeks ago when I questioned Walberg and what he was up to in my WCC preview blog.
I have nothing against Walberg and Pepperdine, but I definitely do see a pretty disturbing trend in what has been going on down there:
* All but one of Westphal's recruits leaving, including Kingsley Costain last week. That shows no loyalty to players he didn't bring in.
* Agreeing to hire Mark Campbell as an assistant coach several months before he was officially hired, allowing Campbell to have carte blanche during the spring/summer AAU circuit.
* Additionally, Campbell has very little coaching experience (two seasons at as an asst. at a CC in Portland) and was hired mainly because he is extremely close friends/Bible Study partners with Brad Tinsley, a big-time recruit.
* Walberg gave scholarships to two sons of Terry Tucker, the coach of Crawford High in San Diego. One son, Rico, was a legit prospect (transferred from Minnesota) but the other son is undersized and not considered a D1 prospect. Not coincidentally, Terry Tucker had two big-time recruits (Tyrone Shelley and Malcolm Thomas) on his team at Crawford and heavily encouraged those players to go to Pepperdine together.
* Hiring a HUGE staff (look at his team photo from last year... there are almost as many suits as players), including not one but TWO of his daughters. (Nepotism, anyone?)
* Snatching Ameer away from LMU after he had already committed, almost assuredly at least partially due to Walberg contacting him after his verbal.
And all of this has happened in a little over a year.
Now, each piece taken individually could easily be explained away. Even two or three of them. But all of them? The cummulative effect shows me a coach that is playing fast and loose with all sorts of rules and who doesn't have a lot of loyalty to players or a high level of ethics.
Will he be successful? That remains to be seen. You can't deny the talent he is brining in. But just compare all of that stuff to what Tention, Reveno, Keating and Grier (all new WCC coaches) have done in the past few seasons... I can think of maybe one or two things out of all of them that would cause me to even raise my eyebrows in the slightest. But Walberg? He's working on a laundry list of questionable activities.
I hope I'm wrong... I hope Walberg has done it all by the book. But the rational side of me tells me that the whole thing is going to blow up down there at some point, especially if he starts ticking off other WCC coaches by poaching their recruits. Coaches will turn a blind eye to a lot of things (it's part of the "code" or whatever), but when it comes to snatching away recruits? Watch out. That's what got Mark Few to turn Lorenzo Romar in to the NCAA.
