Tony just offered Trey Green

There was a fascinating graphic a couple years back that demonstrated that we were the only team in the past decade to not sign a five star after winning a national title. Baylor’s done it. And Villanova did it. So it’s not just blue bloods who can translate national title success into recruiting wins

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Thats the thing. He needs to really figure out what he wants to be. What I have seen he simply is a guard and does whatever is needed but definitely not a true PG. As I have said he plays with a big big time PG in HS in Tahaad Pettiford who is very sure of himself but will differ to Elijah as well

TBs biggest sell to Elijah should be showing him what path he will take on as a player

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Uh, both Baylor and Nova had a 5 star before their natty, and they had been recruiting in those areas for awhile.

We don’t offer the things those kids want (playing a lot early in their career; scoring a lot early in their career; playing faster pace (in some circumstances).

What we offer isn’t for everyone, and TB isn’t changing to accommodate, so we’re not going to recruit like a blue blood and we’re going to lose some to solid middling teams at times.

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Wasn’t jalen Brunson a 5* and already on their 2016 title team? Tony has never had 5*s and I’m not sure why we expect that to suddenly have changed. Villanova has had a pipeline to elite catholic HS kids for a long time and all the talent around Philly. For Baylor, they’ve had a few big recruits since the title but their success is still built on 3 and 4 stars.

I hope ctb beats out both duke and gonzaga for a recruit this year but loses to iowa state and xavier just so everyone has basis for their takes

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Losing to solid middling teams is the problem. If you want to assert that a program that wins a national title should be losing to Xavier and Iowa State across multiple recruiting then that’s fine. If it were any other program we’d be discussing how odd it was

I’m asserting that there are probably some changes the program could make that do not violate the pillars or CTBs emphasis on the pack line that would make us more attractive to recruits

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It’s an ok discussion to have but can we at least wait until Trey green picks Xavier over us?! And then we need to see what PG we get instead of TG

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Well it definitely ain’t the coaching ability (ie: Arizona failure). Or due to integrity (bag dropping). I can’t believe that Sean Miller is actually coaching within 2 years of him getting fired and the allegations of cheating. What terribly low standards…

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But it’s obvious TB is not going to make those changes, so I just don’t see how you can continue to be surprised about that.

I mean, it seems very obvious to me why we don’t get 5 star recruits. They’re not picking schools based on winning. If they did we’d have a ton by now.

You also can’t ignore that Tony has pulled in one his highest rated classes ever in ‘22 off of the title success.

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That’s fine but it’s going to be remarkably difficult to get back to national title contention without it. We’ve had two runs at title contention. The first stems from having a top-3 player in the country in Malcolm Brogdon. The second is when we got a five-star caliber recruit in Hunter who happened to be under the radar due to his injury.

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This is a GOOD, and DIRECT question that I would like to know about why a recruit chooses a school. Do they *ever say because they win a lot? Not as much as I would expect.

The effect of a natty generally and our natty specifically on recruiting is an interesting question. I think the Juzang thing that happened more or less right after was a harbinger. Congrats on your natty? But you’re still not Kentucky…

Unfortunately, though, part of the story is we won the natty and then have had three fairly rough years:

  1. scrappy underdog team that packlined its way to a middling seed (tourney cancelled)
  2. ACC champ!! but… yet another tourney upset (circumstances yada yada)
  3. Didn’t make the tourney / didn’t make noise in the NIT

Whereas Nova went right back to the tourney the next year, and then won it again the following. Baylor was a #1 seed again and at least went to the sweet 16.

I think Green’s recruitment will be a good indicator. It’s understandable we are struggling against offers like ■■■■, UNC, and Kansas. But if we have to bite our fingernails to beat Xavier?? A team that will probably lose its coach for a year or two sometime soon? Yeah, that ain’t ideal.

Addendum: the other problem with the last three years is we didn’t do that great (did absolutely nothing at all in the tourney) AND we didn’t show our previous willingness to play younger talent. We struggled on the court and we didn’t give any indication of a willingness to play younger, more raw guys.

Which to be clear WAS A CHANGE!!! SORRY TO YELL BUT WHEN YOU SAY THIS IN A NORMAL TONE OF VOICE YOU ALL INSIST THAT TONY WAS JUST BEING TONY WHEN THE FACT OF THE MATTER IS TONY GOT BOTH WORSE AND LESS WILLING TO PLAY YOUNGER GUYS. (deep breaths…)

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But it’s always been the case. We’ve lost umpteen recruits to the likes of Xavier before the natty when we were a number 1 seed every year and after the natty when we’ve had 3 ‘down’ years. I’m just not sure why that would be shocking .

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Okay, but so isn’t that relevant to trying to answer the question: “will the natty change anything w/r/t recruiting?”

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Another problem is these middling programs frequently have coaching turnover and thus roster turnover. So you can be Sean Millers first PG recruit and get promised a starting role. Tony can sell him the Kihei role in year 1 (can’t assume beekman leaves), is that enough? Circumstances matter not just the quality of the program.

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The point is that the NATTY should have/hopefully could have changed that- if you want to win AND become a high draft pick/1st rounder then we can do it for you. Covid definitely screwed us over for a couple of years to the point where we only should have had *one down year (last year).

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I’m not going to reply to each to keep it concise, but no, the natty should not have helped our recruiting, because these kids don’t care about the natty. They choose based on quickest path to making money (which now includes NIL), which includes many things including guaranteed playing time early and maybe more importantly the ability to score the ball early. Being in a system that gets up and down more to give people the ability to score more. Winning is probably a component but years of seeing recruiting results tell me it is way way down the list.

TB maybe could change that by playing kids when they don’t earn it in his eyes, letting them score more freely, playing a faster pace, etc etc, things that I’m sure plenty of people want him to do, but he’s just not, so it really doesn’t matter.

For me, this is just basically yet another manifestation of a Tony tendency: THING changed, Tony. Should we change? “No, we should keep doing exactly what we’ve always been doing.”

That tendency has both positive effects (mostly positive, tbh) and some negative effects.

THING could be:

  • ESPN is here for Gameday and wants to interview players and our players would love to talk to them. Should we let them interview a player? “No, do what we’ve always done”
  • we have a great 3-point shooting team (Nova) coming to our gym. Should we extend our defense? “No, double down on the packline”
  • There’s this cool new technology that lets fans watch the Blue-White game. No brainer, right Tony? “No, that’s not the point of practice.”
  • Our fans want orange jerseys once in a while. Seems fun, right Tony? “No, the old school thing is to wear blue on the road.”
  • Well, akshully, at Virginia the fans seem to think an orange road jersey is pretty old school. “Who let you in here? Why are you asking me all these questions.”
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