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Cronin: Bar set too high for Gates

By Paul Dehner Jr., CNATI.com Posted March 8, 2010 5:10 PM ET

The curious case of Yancy Gates took another interesting turn on Monday.

Only, this time it wasn't due to a dominant double-double performance followed by an uninspired 20-minute letdown. Or even another game where the 6-foot-9, 260-pound sophomore goes without a defensive rebound.

The latest explanation for why Gates has not developed into the powerful force many thought he would be comes from the sophomore's own head coach.

And the comments were more unpredictable than Gates' play.

"Who says he's supposed to be a force?" Cronin responded to a question as to why Gates hasn't developed into a force inside.

From there, what began as an honest assessment of where the development of his low-post presence was at, turned into Cronin questioning whether Gates was ever as good as recruiting services and the such claimed he was supposed to be in the first place.

He even referred to Gates' "so-called potential," at one point.

"Yancy was not a dominant player at Withrow High School," Cronin said. "He averaged seven rebounds a game. Check your stats. Yancy has been a guy that is a project. He has got talent but he is a project. He continues to be one."

He may have only averaged seven rebounds a game as a four-year starter in high school at Hughes and Withrow, but his junior and senior seasons he averaged a double-double. He had 21.2 points and 10.5 rebounds a game as a senior and 19.0 points and 10.0 rebounds as a junior for the Tigers, according to the UC media guide. He was the AP Division I Player of the Year his senior season.

There were questions about his consistency in high school, but even with those, he still was a four-star recruit by Scout.com and five-star by Rivals.com. Cronin believes those services themselves have played a role Gates' mentality.

"There are a lot of guys that could be this or could be that," Cronin said. "At the end of the day, we are who we are.

"That is the problem with the whole ranking system of recruits. It is hardest on a guy like Yancy. Because other guys don't have the expectation levels because they don't have the five stars next to their name. That is the biggest problem. The star system doesn't exist like it does for a guy like Yancy or even Lance (Stephenson)."

Cronin doesn't know if those expectations were fair, that they were a source of stress and inferred they were a reason for some of Gates' issues.

He finished the regular season averaging 10.5 points and six rebounds a game. Those numbers are about the same as his freshman season were he averaged 10.6 points and 6.1 rebounds.

"Because of his so-called potential that people have bestowed upon him, it brings stress to his situation," Cronin said. "He has to do the best he can do and I got to live with that. My job is to make sure he is giving me his best effort and has a great attitude. That is all I can do. At times, he gives me sophomore effort. There is a different between sophomore effort and senior effort."

Often a parallel connection is attempted by fans or the media between Gates and UC legend Danny Fortson. Both were of similar body types and came highly recruited. It's one Cronin says he hears all the time.

Fortson finished as the third-leading scorer in UC history and did so in only three seasons. He went from averaging 15.1 points as a freshman to 20.1 points as a sophomore and 21.3 as a junior. The 6-7, 260-pounder moved from averaging 7.6 boards as a freshman to 9.6 as a sophomore.

Again, Cronin says those comparisons are unfair.

"I watched Danny Fortson get 60 points, repeatedly, in AAU games. I am not exaggerating. I am talking 63 against Riverside Chruch: Ron Artest, Adonal Foyle and Mark Blount, three NBA guys. I watched him get 63 on those guys. The guy scored in his sleep.

"You can work on a guy with his free throws and his footwork, but at the end of the day you can't make players somebody you are not...So, the problem with Yancy is people want him to be something he is not. He has to worry about being Yancy Gates."

The most interesting element about all of this line of thinking which claims Gates was never as good as everyone claimed he could be or that the level of expectations were set too high considering his " so-called potential," is that, well, Cronin was one of the people setting the bar that high only two years ago.

In Dan Hoard's blog in early 2008, during Gates' senior season at Withrow, Hoard quoted Cronin in reference to Gates as one of the premier talents he's seen.

Hoard set it up by asking if Cronin had ever seen anybody that big and strong.

"No and it's not even close," said Cronin, who has recruited eight NBA draft picks to college basketball and had six of his recruiting classes ranked in the Top 10 by national publications. "He's the most talented big guy that I've ever recruited. For a coach it's exciting because he's got everything that you can't teach. Everything that Yancy needs are things that can be taught."

How things have changed.

Categories: College, Featured Stories, Men's Basketball, News, University of Cincinnati Bearcats

Tags: Bearcats, Mick Cronin, Yancy Gates