Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="billsin01, post: 2145003, member: 837"] Yeah, I don't think it's an either/or type of situation. Obviously avoiding misses, even if you don't land every single top target or every premier recruit doesn't work out perfectly, is a key for any type of recruiting. But it's not really like the incidence of misses is that much more than it was during our golden era. I mean, we still signed Riley, Williams and Mookie Jones in consecutive years. Gorman was in there as well. I think the key with some of these guys is also the development of others. So Obokoh not working out is not as big a deal if Roberson breaks out with a really solid junior year and becomes a key veteran presence as a senior and McCullough at least gives them a full solid year either his frosh season or theoretically if he were to have come back as a soph. Diagne working out also would have helped. I see basketball as more driven by the top end recruits and football as being more driven by the depth. In football, you're effectively starting 32-35 players, have to figure at least 20 are not ready to really be on the field unless there's an emergency -- so those remaining 25-30 players being decent in terms of providing depth is pretty critical. Hoops functions better if you have at least 8 guys who can play and another player or two who are playing sparingly but developing. But even this becomes difficult b/c if guys don't feel they're going to get enough minutes early, they're gone. BJ Johnson is a good example. At the end of the day, though, having a pipeline of kids who could theoretically develop into solid players is a key and any recruiting miss has a potential to hurt if any other players don't work out as planned (i.e. leave earlier than expected for the pros, transfer, don't develop quite the way you were hoping, etc.). Bottom line, my general point was that we need to better manage our roster with whatever strategy the staff feels is appropriate. My gut says a Lydon averaging 18 and 9 makes us an easy tournament team and potentially a decent threat to make a run in March, but perhaps that's oversimplifying. [/QUOTE]

Verification: What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?