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Message: [QUOTE="HRE Otto IV, post: 4597852, member: 5685"] I do NOT think it hurt. We got plenty of players here the early years of the ACC. We were a name program with a name HoF HC playing in, at the time, what was thought of as the best BBall conference. Even with the ACC being down, look at the F4s the last decade. I think our recruiting went down because of JB and the assistants. JB didn't put the effort in. And JB wanted kids who were easy to coach. Also is it a coincidence that Hop leaves and recruiting goes down? Is it a coincidence that two 3rds of our staff had little to no recruiting experience prior to being at SU? Is it a coincidence that we have SU guys and not outsiders who already have connections? I will say that going forward I do think being in the ACC will hurt. We have been down the last 9 years so it is harder to recruit. We no longer have a championship winning HoF HC. Duke, UNC, and Louisville are all down and not likely to be your typical Duke, UNC, or Louisville any time soon. Those factors make things more difficult. We made our program getting kids from DC to Boston. Recruiting is more national now than ever, so keeping kids from the Northeast in the Northeast is harder. On top of that the B1G is seen as a better conference, even though they never win anything (only 2 F4s in last 6 NCAAs). So that, plus having a lot more money puts SU at a disadvantage vs Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland. The Big East lately has been seen as a better conference also. UConn, Seton Hall, Providence, St Johns, Georgetown, Nova can all go to a recruit and say that they play all of their home games plus FIVE road games a year within that DC to Boston corridor. Oh and the conf tourny is in MSG. You know how many games SU plays total a year in that area? ONE! So that puts us at a disadvantage. With the right HC it doesn't matter. Tony Bennett or Nate Oats would win a lot of games at St Bonaventure. But a decent HC will have a hard time being consistently good being in the ACC vs being in the Big East IMO. [/QUOTE]

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