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Message: [QUOTE="Forza Azzurri, post: 3298635, member: 1452"] Just my opinion but I don't think upper echelon of ACC is out of reach... Indulge me for a moment if you will... I firmly believe that a perfect storm has resulted in the team that we are putting on the floor today: 1. Sanctions. Left us with a much thinner margin of error with our recruiting and, therefore, the misses become much more significant. 2. Our most prolific recruiter left. That impacted the program threefold: 1) There was a recruiting void created by his departure. 2) Guys, like Stewart, who would be wearing orange today if Hop were still here, went elsewhere. 3) Somebody, either JB or an assistant(s) needed to fill Hop's large recruiting shoes. 3. Misses on guys we either went all-in on and did not get or guys that we did get that haven't yet lived up to their rankings. Misses that we could ill-afford given our recruiting penalties. The recruiting cycle is not a months-long process. It is a years' long process. Hop starting recruiting Stewart when he was a freshmen. That is four years ago. Unless you are K or Calipari, you don't simply get to walk into a 4 or 5 star recruits living room late in the process and expect to land him. Therefore, even once JB reengaged in the recruiting process and someone else stepped up to become lead assistant recruiter (no statement on whether or not anyone on current staff can be as good a recruiter as Hop was), it was going to take time for that process to yield results. So, here we are 3 years later and we have just landed the highest-rated recruit in some time. Hopefully, this is the start of a secular uptick in recruiting that will persist even once JB leaves the nest. Bottom line, I don't think you have to sell out, as you put it, to be successful in basketball the way you clearly do in football - at least not yet. You just need to get back to recruiting the same type of talent that you were recruiting a mere 5-6 years ago. Not saying it is easy or a no-brainer that it gets done but I do think it is more doable than you imply it is. [/QUOTE]

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