RF2044
Living Legend
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- Aug 15, 2011
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It's pretty eye-opening that for two consecutive years, the coaching staff hasn't landed any of the primary targets they focused on in either the class of 2022 or the class of 2023.
In 2022, the staff swung for the fences, and was involved with numerous highly rated prospects -- Dior, Westry, Cruz, Lands, Filipowski, and Clingan. And while I'm bully on the class we did eventually land, we missed out on every single one of the guys we initially targeted. Granted, some of that was outside of our span of control -- example: Dior being such a flake, Westry chasing $$$, etc. And down the road we might look through the historical lens at guys we did land, like Brown / Carey, and think that we did pretty damn well because they are big time contributors. But we essentially went o-fer with our main targets.
The class of 2023 was always going to be smaller, since we brought in seven [7!!!] new faces this past off-season, but again our primary focus was on Estrella and Ducharme, and with JP's announcement for Tennessee, we've missed out on both of those guys, as well.
Remains to be seen how we'll rebound with the '23 class -- but on the surface, we burned a lot of time, effort, and resources on recruits that we weren't able to reel in over the last two years.
And for the record, I'm a huge fan of the class of '22. I think Copeland, Brown, and Carey end up far outshooting their rankings, and Mintz / Taylor / Bunch have lots of potential, with Mintz possibly being our next NBA prospect.
But looking at the macro phenomenon in 2022 / 2023 is sobering.
In 2022, the staff swung for the fences, and was involved with numerous highly rated prospects -- Dior, Westry, Cruz, Lands, Filipowski, and Clingan. And while I'm bully on the class we did eventually land, we missed out on every single one of the guys we initially targeted. Granted, some of that was outside of our span of control -- example: Dior being such a flake, Westry chasing $$$, etc. And down the road we might look through the historical lens at guys we did land, like Brown / Carey, and think that we did pretty damn well because they are big time contributors. But we essentially went o-fer with our main targets.
The class of 2023 was always going to be smaller, since we brought in seven [7!!!] new faces this past off-season, but again our primary focus was on Estrella and Ducharme, and with JP's announcement for Tennessee, we've missed out on both of those guys, as well.
Remains to be seen how we'll rebound with the '23 class -- but on the surface, we burned a lot of time, effort, and resources on recruits that we weren't able to reel in over the last two years.
And for the record, I'm a huge fan of the class of '22. I think Copeland, Brown, and Carey end up far outshooting their rankings, and Mintz / Taylor / Bunch have lots of potential, with Mintz possibly being our next NBA prospect.
But looking at the macro phenomenon in 2022 / 2023 is sobering.