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[QUOTE="JOC44, post: 5760149, member: 613"]
The new reality places way more emphasis on talent evaluation.  In the good old days when schools like Syracuse recruited mainly high schoolers, a consensus would develop as to high school rankings.  Individual colleges might like some guys more than their ranking and other guys less, but directionally, there was a whole industry who did some of the rough sorting.  And then there were AAU showcases (EYBL, etc.) where you could see players against other top high school players even if the kid didn't go to a high school that was a basketball factory.

Now, with the focus on the portal, I think portal recruits fall into three broad categories:

1.  Guys were were very successful at the P5 level

2.  Guys who were at a P5 school but either didn't play much or didn't play great

3.  Guys who played well at a level lower than the P5 level

There's actually a fourth level -- guys who didn't do much at a lower level, but I assume we're not in the mix for them.

There are hits and misses at all three levels.  Obviously guys who have done well at the P5 level are, in general, the safest bets.  But we would have put Nait George at that level.  William Kyle was a Level 2 guy, but he worked out pretty well.  And a coaching staff has to do a lot of projection and evaluation for the non-P5 guys because there's no good chance to see them that much against the caliber of talent we play against in the ACC.

My point is I don't really care where these guys played last year, particularly if they weren't bona fide stars at a top, top level.  I can be thrilled with a team made up entirely of guys who didn't play at the P5 level last year plus Sadiq, Kiyan, and Moesch, if those non-P5 guys can play.  We'll find out whether they can play in due course, but it's too early for me to be bummed and where our portal guys went to college doesn't move the needle at all for me.
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