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Message: [QUOTE="reedny, post: 2192278, member: 1423"] The problem with "waiting" (on Ayala or others) is that lately it hasn't helped us. While I don't agree with the dooms-dayers (we could still have a decent '17 class and bounce back in '18), we are definitely in a mini-slump with the current strategy. For a while (before the NCAA mess), we were recruiting at least one 5-star/top 40-type player every year. The list includes DC, Rak, Ennis, McCullough, Battle (although he verballed to UM first). Then the sanctions hit, and we started to struggle. We did get TT (and White off the G-T market), but there have been a lot of disappointments. While we've struggled, it seems like the top-third of the ACC teams have moved up the recruiting ladder. They're stocking talent, with 6'11 - 7 footers all over the place. Several teams have 2-3 big centers (UNC with Meeks, Hicks and Johnson last year), Duke, LV with Mahmoud and the foreign dudes they get every year, etc.. WF has a couple talented bigs, and even G-T has a capable 7-footer (lammers). It's impossible to say whether JB's age, the NCAA's, the aging Dome, bad luck, or a combination thereof is behind this. But something seems to be going on. I wisih we could move our recruiting timeline to the left. Waiting has hurt us more than it has helped. We did get TT late but got burrned on a bunch of others by waiting (Noel, Green, Tucker, etc...). These past couple of years, it seems like the top 50 kids either pick selector programs right away (Duke, UK, UNC, Kansas) or "wait" for a selector offer later by leveraging next-tier programs like SU. I'm not blaming recruits -- that's the game. To get the best offer you can. But we have to play the game too. Waiting is hurting us -- huge amounts of time and effort getting used as leverage only to have $ or some selector school swoop in in Spring. Maybe we'd be better off pushing for earlier decisions/commitments instead of getting strung out. [/QUOTE]

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