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Message: [QUOTE="HoustonCuse, post: 2179221, member: 87"] RF, I want to ask you about this sentence. I understand it from the perspective that we currently have much to offer and in that case, we'd like to believe we could beat out a lower tier ACC team for a recruit. I definitely get that. But "face some hard realities out the current state of our recruiting." I'd like to hear/discuss more about that. What specifically would that look like and what does it mean? These are valid discussion points. Let's assume that we lose out on JT. What does it mean about our recruiting? Does it form a trend when combined with Green? I know emotionally that we would feel that way, but is it true? On the one hand, it can be interpreted as a failure to close on recruits. (We can debate what that means and how/why we are failing and how/what should be done to do better) On the other hand, it could be just two cases of us getting beat out by things not under our control (ego/the Calipari machine for Green and the location of GT in the case of Tucker) I understand that in both of these recruitments, hindsight will be available to blame the staff for poor decisions. In the case of Green - not keeping options open with other top PGs and in the case of Tucker - not backing off of him for an extended period. However, it is possible that these decisions were not critical factors in the recruitments and/or could still have been correct decisions even though we still lost the players in the end. Alternatively, we could have, for instance in the case of Green - better recognized that he was a "flight risk" and pressured him more with Coleman or another player and that could have forced him out the door and we still lose Coleman. What I'm getting at is that we simply will never know those answers. The decisions made by the staff could have been really and obviously terrible, or they could have put us in the best posture to win, we just didn't. As I've said previously, I am inclined to give the staff the benefit of the doubt since I have 0.5% of the relevant information, but I certainly acknowledge they could have fumbled it. In the case of Tucker - if we get him and he turns out to be the second coming of Deshaun Williams - crushing the team's potential (by generating bad headlines/locker room trouble/suspensions/etc) thus validating that backing off was the correct decision after all - would we consider re-engaging with him a recruiting error? Another possibility is that it is not the recruiting strategy/technique that is the problem, but rather the entire program. Is there something visible or invisible to us that is making Syracuse less desirable as a place to play than it was a couple years ago? JB's status would be a factor there, Hop's departure, facilities, mediocre regular season performance in the past 2-3 years, program brand stained by NCAA penalties? I suspect that these are not huge factors because we have essentially been finalists with a lot of top prospects, just didn't get the final win. If there was something rotten in the core of the program, I don't know why so many high level prospects would keep us on their lists for so long - after many cutdowns, and in the case of QG and JT in the final two. [/QUOTE]

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