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Message: [QUOTE="IthacaMatt, post: 3730292, member: 405"] Within this last decade, and for a decade before that, our typical recruiting class was one guy with star potential, a guy who could get buckets. That guy got the green light. Carmelo, of course. Eric Devendorf, Jonny Flynn, Dion Waiters, etc. Billy Edelin, Tyler Ennis, Bazely and Chris McCullouch were supposed to be those kinds of players. So were a handful of recruits who we thought we had in the bag, until at the last moment, we didn't. That's where the decline began. We no longer got that elite guy in our last half dozen classes, or maybe a couple more than that. Then we usually got a couple guys between 40 and 75. Guys like Gerry McNamara, Terrence Roberts, Demetris Nichols, Mookie Watkins, CJ Fair, Jerami Grant, Tyler Lydon, Michael Carter-Williams, Kris Joseph, James Southerland, Scoop Jardine, Rick Jackson, Malachi Richardson. Those kinds of guys. We used to get a couple every year. You could see they could play, they might get 10 minutes as a frosh, but they contributed as sophomores, and were leaders by junior year, if they stayed that long. And then we would take a flyer on a guy outside the top 100 who fit what we were looking for, more situational players, some of whom might blossom into stars with time. Once in a while they turned into Andy Rautins, Arinze Onuaku, Brandon Triche, Baye Keita, Marek Dolezaj or Oshae Brissett. Taking out the top 2 groups, leaves us with maybe one ready-made guy per year, without going to Canada to get him. And then relying on at least 2 or 3 borderline guys from the past becoming solid contributors. We've seen this approach to recruiting work really well from the time of the first probation until maybe the last 5 years (i.e. since Mike's last year, when he clearly had checked out), and we crapped out recruiting an important class to our future post-probation 2. Mike left and we sucked for a couple years. Now, we seem to be regaining our footing, but greatly diminished. The way he handles (i.e. refuses to play) kids has become a big problem. You can't have so damn many kids transfer or leave just as they're starting to get good and expect to keep a program at a high level. [/QUOTE]

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