I understand that this is the recruiting thread, but conspicuous by its absence here is anyone saying we're going to make the tournament next year.
And I'M the pessimistic one?
If you believe in John Groce long-term, you believe we have enough to get an NCAA bid next year. That is the core of my point. Despite a great deal of personal affection for Groce (which I did not feel toward Weber), I lean more toward the negative side of that matrix. If others feel more positively, that's great, I hope you're right!
If you believe that with a full, healthy, talented roster, we're going to abjectly fail AGAIN and yet somehow this will all be made okay in the end by adding a couple players who only very marginally increase our talent level, you're living in a fantasy land. I don't know what else to say.
I know it sometimes seems like the whole game of college basketball is just a simple matter of stacking a critical mass of rivals.com stars together on the same team, but if that were the case, we'd have been Big Ten contenders in each of Groce's first three years.
If the only way to get Tilmon and Goodwin is by stubbornly refusing to acknowledge that we have a coach incapable of exploiting their talent, what on earth is the point? You could say keep them here for a year and then fire Groce when they are less likely to look elsewhere, but then, again I ask, I'M the cynical one?