Murovich Commits to Western Michigan

I kind of missed this one last night, but Western Michigan picked up a very nice recruit for either the 2008 or 2009 season, in Pittsburgh's Tyler Murovich.

Murovich is a late '89 birthdate, and is 5'10" 175 lbs. He reportedly has excellent scoring ability and should be a big offensive threat for the Broncos.

Murovich's journey to Kalamazoo is an interesting one, and a good example of how having a wide-ranging network of former coaches and players can help teams. Research on Ice's Paul Shaheen mentioned what a big role Western's assistant coach Marc Fakler played in recruiting Murovich. Fakler's coaching career started at Wayne State University in Detroit in 2002, where he served as a volunteer assistant coach under former Western Michigan coach Bill Wilkinson while Fakler worked towards a master's degree in sports administration.

From there, Fakler moved on to Robert Morris University where he worked as an assistant under Derek Schooley, who played for Wilkinson at Western Michigan in the early '90s. This time spent in the Pittsburgh area probably helped Fakler become more familiar with, and develop a relationship with Murovich, and when Fakler became an assistant coach at Western Michigan, he was able to land a pretty big recruit in Murovich in his first year at Kalamazoo.

It's an important reminder that things like this often don't happen in a vacuum. There's often a long string of events that leads to a certain point. Murovich could go on to be a great player at Western Michigan in a few years, and if he does, it will be, at least in some small part, due to a former coach that was fired from Western more than a decade before Murovich ever stepped foot on campus.