Let's apply that to the Kaleb Joseph situation. Newton wanted to come here. He visited here first. He had connections to our program through Neumann-Goretti, his coach, etc. and was ready to pull the trigger on his visit. We told him to hold off because our top guy was Joseph, and we wanted to bring Joseph on campus before accepting a commitment from anyone. Joseph visited, and the writing seemed on the wall, and Newton decided to take the next best offer for him. That was pre-sanctions, and we had several open scholarships to play with.
In Monte Morris's case, he also wanted to come here. I believe he went on record as stating that he didn't have an issue with coming in alongside / playing behind Ennis. We didn't offer, he ends up at Iowa State and has a fantastic collegiate career. Meanwhile, we desperately tried to convince Rysheed Jordan to come in alongside Ennis, but he balked and ended up at St. John's. So clearly, we had room and wanted to bring in an extra guard [I don't know if you remember, but that year we had Ennis / Cooney in the backcourt, and no other guards [Gbinije filled in there as the backup at both guard spots]. Monte Morris was literally a bird in the hand who would have committed on the spot, but we passed--and the rest is history. At the very least, it shows that our assessment of Morris's capabilities was off-target to not even offer him a scholarship.
So while I acknowledge that none of us really know what happened behind the scenes in deliberations between players / coaches, the fact that we actively sought to add other guards in both of those classes suggests that something else was afoot. And in a couple of cases, that the staff may have mis-judged the potential of some of the guys we passed on.