I imagine it’s harder to get a true evaluation of international players - it’s harder to see them live and it’s harder to tell what the competition is. You have to rely more on contacts that you trust. It is a riskier strategy, but the payoff could come in a really terrific player with minimal competition.
Recruiting in general relies on so many things going well: proper evaluation (hard to do under the pandemic rules); continued trajectory of development and maybe physical growth through So/Jr/Sr years (Reuter is example of one who didn’t); a recruit preferring your school over others and preferably early on; a proper read on (or perhaps a little luck with) a player’s constitution/competitiveness/willingness to work and contempt for losing; the player fitting into the program and complementing other players, hopefully even raising the bar for everyone. And then have that go very well for 3 or 4 guys each year… do that and you basically have Guy/Jerome/Hunter/Huff/(and I’ll throw in Diakite even though he enrolled early). That caliber of class is rare. Most classes have a guy or two that don’t pan out as hoped, and that’s just the way it is. The guys who are more sure things are one-and-dones, aren’t coming to UVA, and don’t always pan out anyway.
I’d be more down with the international route if more of our guys had fit this profile. But most of our international guys have clearly had limited upside. Obviously Murray breaks that mold. Same with our late signing guys. Like I said I think avoiding those reaches like we have so far in 2021 is the best strategy moving forward given the number of transfers will only continue to go up. Better to add a transfer than reach on a limited upside player.
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Hopefully, Murray will work out well. We certainly have successful comps for him and McKneely in our recent history. But we’ll know when we know.
We’ve had some pretty useful international guys. Salt and Diakite (he’s quasi-international as a recruit). I thought Baddochi looked pretty good as a recruit, but he had other life interests. We tried to get that guy Svi who did well at Kansas.
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Caffaro hasn’t exactly been a bust either and could provide some value down the line if he sticks around
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Yea when I say international I mean guys not playing high school and/or AAU in North America. Guys like Mamadi and Frankie were essentially US recruits from an evaluation standpoint.
Caffaro is far from a bust. The question moving forward will be does his skill set fit our offense?
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I do think there’s some value in team chemistry with having a larger class. I know that was talked about this summer. We’ve lacked any sort of cohesion as of late with our recruiting classes. JAR, McCorkle, Beekman still have some shot.
Hunter had an injury at the start of training camp…that is very true…it is also very well documented that it was not sone sort of season long injury…TB is also on the record of saying “What did I do” in reference to RSing Hunter…based upon the 2 years he played at UVA I think we all can see that hunter would of gotten burn as a first year no doubt… how
Much is a different matter as neither ty or guy started as first years all that much…
By the end of the year they were playing enough that everyone knew they were the future of UVA basketball. That’s why Shayok left. He still would have got quite a few minutes but he knew that Ty and Kyle were taking over
I don’t think this narrative is correct. Shayok left because he watched Hunter in practice every day coming off a RS but it had little to do with Kyle and Ty
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Ok… it is we’ll known why shayok and thompson left… they weren’t going to get the minutes they thought they would as upperclassmen… all that came to be after the season played out though…
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That’s healthy for everyone involved. CTB has those meetings at the end of every season.
I may be wrong but that’s what I was told and I believeit.Kyle was much more a threat than Dre to Shayok
The writing was certainly on the wall. Kyle and Ty had a combined 12 starts their freshman year. 11 of them were in the last 7 games of the year. Kyle’s minutes went from 16.6 in the first 27 goes to 26.4 in the last 7 games. Ty’s went from 12.1 to 20.9. Shayock went the opposite, with his minutes dropping way off and only 1 start in the last 7 games. Thompson also had 1 start but his minutes stayed up in the last 7 games. The trend was painfully clear for those guys. And I imagine that everyone on the team could see that Dre was going to get a lot of run the next year.
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