SU is tied for 7th place nationally in McDAA captures. Should be good enough for more than one tournament win in 32 tries don't you think?
So I'll admit up front -- I only view tournament success as a part of a coach's resume. For me, I tend to see this tournament as a lot of luck due to small sample sizes and uneven draws. That doesn't mean there aren't coaches who seem to have had more success than others -- K's 88 wins are phenomenal, Williams and Dean Smith outpace JB at this point, Izzo and Pitino are great, Self has been really good generally, you might hate Cal but I would guess he'll continue to make deep runs at UK, etc. But pointing at simply tournament wins neglects all the other stuff JB has done to build this program and consistently keep a small private school at the forefront of the college hoops world (Providence, Seton Hall, St. John's, BC, and countless others can attest to how difficult it is to maintain success over a span of four decades).
The other point I'll make is on talent -- everyone points to McD's AAs and that's fine -- obviously a pretty solid measure of a player's existing skill and perceived upside. And, clearly, these players have had significantly positive impact on this program for years. The Pearl was enormous, the Thompson/Coleman/Owens crew was phenomenal, Wallace may have helped 'save' the program, Melo, MCW, etc.
However, there are a couple things to note on the talent end of things. For one, if we take the period from 87 on (which is arbitrary but based on when I started following) there was a pretty huge gap between Wallace ('92) and Melo (02). I mean, people act like we've been pulling in McD's AAs every year forever but that's not really true. We pulled one in every year (pretty much) from 83-90, but then it was wallace in 92 and a looooonnnnggg gap to Melo in 02.
Secondly, there's another way to look at talent. I'm not sure if it's the right way, but if you compare Cuse and, for example, UConn based on NBA talent, we really don't stack up favorably at all. Uconn has 11 guys who have averaged double-figures in points in their NBA careers and of those 11 only Cliff Robinson got drafted prior to 94 (Donyell Marshall).
SU on the other hand, has just 9 players who've averaged double-figures for their careers and of those nine, two were back in the 50s/60s (Bing and Eddie Miller, who played just two seasons anyway) and four more were late 80s or very early 90s -- Douglas (89), Owens (91), Seikaly (88) and Coleman (90). So since 91 we've had exactly three players drafted who put up double-figures (Melo, MCW and Waiters) -- and two of those guys were drafted in 12 and 13. So from the 92 draft to the 2011 draft we had one player drafted who put up double-figures in the nba (melo).
So I don't know exactly how you want to interpret this stuff b/c there were obviously some pretty amazing players who simply didn't translate to the nba for whatever reason (Pearl, Flynn, Moten, etc.) and some who've put together solid careers despite not being stars or consistent starters (Warrick, Schayes, Etan Thomas, Orr, etc.). I also don't absolve JB since afterall it's his job to get talent as well as coach.
But the bottom line if you're trying to make a statement on talent is this -- regardless of mcd's AAs it's pretty clear that UConn was beating us a lot in the mid-90s through the first decade of the 2000s in part b/c they simply started to get an edge in talent (Gordon, Allen, Walker, Gay, Okafor, Drummond, Hamilton, Butler, Villanueva...). And it's pretty clear to me that there are some out there who have a tendency to overstate just how much elite talent has flowed through the doors -- or at least came through the doors from the mid-90s until the really strong run starting in 2007 or so.
