Not that it matters now, but.... you've heard the story in the media, but now for the REST of the story.
He was 100% coming to Wake Forest, or so he led everyone to believe. Rusty, Battle, and Buzz were all checking in with him and his hs coach daily. They were openly communicating with our guys and things seemed to be going smoothly. We were interested and talking to 2 other bigs but decreased contact once Haas gave the verbal. We were committed to him, and he to us, so everyone thought.
The afternoon before he was to sign the LOI, he talked with Rusty and was 100% on board with Wake. This was around 3:00-4:00pm. Being from a small town and new to all of this. he asked questions about what was going to happen, the media, if his folks needed to do anything, what should he wear. Again, no reason to think anything was up.
Later that night (not sure how late but I'm assuming 9:00-10:00pm) Rusty gets a phone call from Haas telling him that he's not going to sign the LOI. He said that he was going to take a visit to another college (UAB). His mind was made up - he was not signing LOI, not coming to Wake BUT he wasn't sure what he was going to do. He said he may sign at the end of the weekend with us, but he wanted to have time to make up his mind and think about his choices. Essentially stringing us along.
Even though Haas verballed at the beginning of Sept, Purdue stayed in hot pursuit of him. They didn't care that he'd verballed, and continued with a full-court press recruiting. None of this info was ever relayed to our staff. We truly had no idea, and were given no indication that this was even a possibility. The hs coach, the kid, the parents all did a great job keeping it on the down low. Haas never even indicated that they were calling or that they were interested. Haas told our staff that he was going to UAB on Friday, which is why we didn't make a trip that day. It wasn't incompetence, there would have been no point in going down if he wasn't going to even be home. We find out later that Purdue is at his HS that day. Thats the first we hear about Purdue. Complete shady on their part.
We fly down on Sunday and make a final pitch, but he had already decided on Purdue. Instead of telling the coaches that he has verballed to Purdue and is signing his LOI to play for them, he lets the coaches fly down and waste a day even while he knew he wasn't going to come to Wake. Everything he told the press was BS. The reasoning from Deman on 247 re: the fans is also a load of crap. Our coaches have made no comment and even if they did, they wouldn't have anything kind to say about Haas or the situation. The entire staff was involved with recruiting him, so they were all pissed, hurt, and shocked. Haas made himself out to be a good Christian guy, yet he totally screwed us over. Battle especially was livid. They put a lot of time into this kid, and lost time with others. Lets just say Matt Painter is not especially well liked in these parts nowadays.