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[QUOTE="cliftonparksufan, post: 4980363, member: 9"]
I'll respond to your post since you were the original OP and everything else is revisionist history.  The extra Covid year plus open transfers plus NIL has totally changed the landscape of college basketball.

The extra year hurt us with Jesse and Joe.  But they were 5th year players.  In a normal career they wouldn't have even been on the roster.  We had four years to find Jesse's backup and the results were not good.

But, that said, those guys among others left because they could transfer without sitting.   2000 kids or so entered the portal.  We have gotten our share of transfers but also lost kids.  The net/net is definitely not even if you factor Kadary/Joe/Jesse.  You could argue that this ruined college basketball more than anything.

Then tie NIL into the equation.   The poster children would be Zach Edey and Armando Bacot.  Those schools were able to hold onto their "stars" while our school's effort was very slow in starting. But our school wasn't the only one.  Michigan lost a big star and hasn't recovered.  Plus, the Weitsman mess, was just a mess.  But, even if Syracuse could have held onto Cole Swider for one more, it could have had a big impact along with Jesse (and Joe depending on which side of the fence you are on, but he is a 2000 point scorer).

So to tie in your question, the answers are all of the above.  JAB wanted to coach his kids, recruits didn't want to play for an old man in what they perceived to be an outdated system, the program was late backfilling the roster with adequate recruits/transfers and no matter what others may argue, not jumping on NIL from day one cost us as well.
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