I still believe most of our frustration around recruiting comes from having two lead guards leave as freshmen last year. Then whiffing in front of the entire nation on RayJ, and then following it up by basically putting yourself in the same position as last year. Which is having no trusted lead guard anywhere on the roster except instead of two freshmen combo guards, we are entrusting those duties to a sophomore PF who hasn't run the point in college.
I'd say our biggest issue is getting talent to stay and maybe even getting it to develop, which to hand in hand.
If Brad knows we are getting our PG in 2024, I have no issue on a flyer sitting behind him. Same goes for JJ. It's not flashy, but Brad has hit enough on those guys to give him some more leash.
Strongly agree with the former. It's one of my main frustrations with the current staff. Too much player turnover. I also feel like they just didn't have good control over the team in general last season. Lot of things pointing to a very wounded culture. My other frustration is with regard to the tournament results. I get how random it is, but we have looked like a deer-in-headlights in about every single NCAA game I've seen us play under this regime.
Talent identification and player development has been their strong-suit though, in my opinion. We have a couple 4 star guys in Ayo & Kofi that went on to become 1st Team AAs and they brought in a 10ppg transfer from Texas Tech who the national media & talking heads are discussing as a 1st team AA as well. We also have Hawkins who was a 3 star recruit and he's been showing up in mock drafts even since the beginning of last season. Plummer was also a kid that wasn't highly sought after that ended up scoring 15 ppg for us and filled a role that was so desperately needed.
My thing with recruiting is that it seems we are more focused on pointing our NIL dollars more toward already-proven players via the transfer portal than throwing money at highly rated HS recruits. Which might be okay... Clark was an absolute disaster, and from what I gather, effectively stole money from our program. Many of us have come to completely ignore the transfer portal altogether, even though its probably the 1A method of acquiring talent in the current state of things, as if the three 4 star, already-proven, ready-to-contribute-now guys that we landed just a few months ago do not exist at all.