FIFY
His mother recently died, leaving dad and a younger sibling at home, as I recall. For Stacey: A prospect's commitment to his hometown and the mother he lost
I disagree. Hop is definitely a factor, but there’s a reason that Villanova, Providence and Seton Hall have all improved since we are no longer a factor in the big East. Northeast players and families want to see their kids play. The ACC gives them fewer opportunities to watch them.
Clingan wasn’t coming here, that’s true. But our recruiting in general has gone into the **ter, and I submit its largely based on the 3 or more issues I outlined in my post. It’s been a perfect storm of suck, and it’s now starting to catch up to us. JMHO
We’ve lost top targets from New York to Maryland, Notre Dame, Washington, Arizona and Indiana. We stopped recruiting Jersey and Philly once Hop left.
And we lost a few players who “probably” would’ve signed if Hop was still around, even some local kids who followed him all the way to Washington state.
I agree. I‘m sick of the ACC excuse though. If we lost more guys to Big East schools I’d at least see it, but we are losing most of our top targets to Big Ten and western schools. Hardly easy for families to see their kids play.
We used to own Philly and New Jersey. Those kids now want to play closer to home, ie Big East. This has all happened since joining the ACC. If this was all on Hop, then why aren’t they all going to Washington?
Well we don't even try there. Here's where some of our bigger misses mostly from NY have gone that did not include Duke. Answer to me if they are better schools and more convenient for their families to see them?
Makes me think we spend too much time going after the wrong recruits.
The main takeaway to me is we are getting destroyed by Big 10 schools.
In my opinion, we need to be going after guys that fit our system/culture more, not the top recruits that half the country is recruiting and then settling for backups after missing. The issue is, I don’t think there’s a clear vision of our system anymore…
That may be somewhat true if we always were this bad at keeping local talent, but that has not always been the case.
I think the culture around staying close to home has probably changed too relative to the old days. Even just look at the list of "locals" you alluded to before and where they actually went to high school:
Like we use to. The Melo and Flynn classes were the best as a whole. This class has play well lots of potential. Joe had a bad shooting night and we lost our starting point and had the game won if we stopped the damn ball.
You should have watched longer because he was MVP of the tournament. I’d take him in a heartbeat.
Kudos.
