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Message: [QUOTE="Zelda Zonk, post: 3979681, member: 966"] The 'defensive' comment was global, and only partially related to what you wrote, defending our '60 and 80'-ranked recruits as being "just fine" for what we need to be what we need to be. The thing is, i don't believe you can discuss Baylor, Virginia, and Villanova as models for how we are going to be successful. That's like saying we should all do what the Tampa Bay Rays do in baseball—let's win the best division in baseball with no fans and no money. Sounds good, but those situations aren't useful as predictable models if you don't have the entire structure to do that. A lot of the opinion on this probably depends on how you rate our staff. If you see a HoFer on the bench, then you probably don't think that aspect of the equation is the hanging point, for example, and then it becomes even more of a challenge to find 'reasons why not'—why we can't just do the same thing as Baylor. We probably don't differ all that much on these matters, but i'm seeing a larger gap between the recruiting area i'd like to be in than you are seeing... possibly. When we're talking about a recruit at 80, that might also mean he's the 35th best at his position in his class (generalizing—not related to specific recruits). And i'm looking at it like this: we are a top 10 team historically, we have a premier coaching name at the top, we have one of the top 5 playing environments, we have a school with top 5 curricula in certain attractive departments, we have space in the New York media, and we're in the best conference in the country. If we want to be in the upper echelon of quality teams in that conference, we need to be stocking and re-stocking our roster with better than '35th best' position players. Maybe it's just that simple for my way of thinking about it? And, again—i've said it before—i 'love' any kid who commits to my alma mater. They become ours. They become 'family,' whether they're a #1 recruit or #150. But, what i'm seeing is us finishing middle of the pack and then getting 80th-ranked players who basically are just going to continue what we've been seeing. And then more rationalizations about the number of 60-80 ranked players contributing to an overall 'top five' class, but those kids are going to be playing against top 20 and top 50 kids, so the aggregate 'class math' doesn't matter. [/QUOTE]

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