I think get old stay old is more important with a young core from the HS ranks. McKneely, Dunn, Bond, Rohde, Buchanan, Gertrude, Robinson, Bliss, Sharma, Cofie, and hopefully Mallory.
2023 was get old stay old but with meh talent. There was minimal upside there with Kihei, Papi, Franklin, Gardner⌠only high upside guys were Shedrick and Beekman.
So I think thatâs the difference in this case.
One thing Iâve been feeling uncertain about is how much to attribute the offensive struggles to coaching/scheme vs. recruiting/personnel. As much as I personally enjoy peeking in on other teamsâ offenses and wishing we might borrow more from other teams, I also know that just plugging in a different teamâs offense wouldnât necessarily lead to success if it didnât fit our personnel. I donât think we are getting the best out of our personnel, but even if we were, Iâm not sure how high the ceiling would be? I probably donât watch enough of other teams to have a good sense of if there are other teams with similar personnel who are getting better results.
7 or more is crazy lmao
This is where I am right now. If we do manage to make the tournament, I canât help but think that we completely 
the bed and lose by 20+ points. If things start going wrong, it just doesnât seem like we have whatever it is that you need to right the ship.
We won the ACC regular season. I know we flamed out in March and we werenât a 1-seed, âjust a 4â, but only the bluest of Blue Bloods would say we sucked.
That team had a stretch down the line of struggling back to back with two sub 200 teams in Notre Dame and Louisville. I also donât consider the acc regular season that great an accomplishment with how horrid the acc has been outside like 3-4 teams. Do think it was a plus we finished ahead of UNC and Duke in the regular season though UNC also sucked and Duke wasnât great when Lively wasnât on the floor.
I think sucked relative to the 2014-2019 way of playing. And if you consider the NCAA tournament success as a metric of success, then just plain sucked.
We can complain about the schematics, in-game Xs/Os etc, but it comes down to one thing, well two things, converging together for a sustained period: recruiting woes and player retainment. We first started seeing serious cracks in 2021, but this started in 2017; thatâs when the ground started to shift, and the programâs trajectory took off in a different direction⌠the staff had no answers for a course correction. NIL and the NCAA, lifting the transfer sit period, poured gasoline on a burning house.
Because Brogdon and co. were passing the torch to the â16 crew and things were cooking on the court, it was easy to brush off everything else. In hindsight, you can argue that the brilliant lone transfers of Braxton, Sam, and then Trey (3 NBA players, one being a star and another a solid rotational player) during this early period also contributed to the change in philosophy and our approach to recruiting and personnel management, and, unfortunately, reinforced outdated stereotypes and biases of the coaching staffâŚnow the game finally caught up. Weâre having a cold dose of reality. You either follow the principles that built the program â a stable foundation for player development within the systemâŚthe thing the program is predicated on - or you abandon it and chase the dragon more and more, scrambling to put together a piecemeal, haphazard roster every year that doesnât resemble what made you successful in the first place.
The recruiting period of 2017 â 2021 easily ranks as the one of the worst recruiting jobs in all of P5 and thatâs no exaggeration. When put into context, I would argue that 2017-2019 IS the worst recruiting botch in all of college basketball: 7 out of the 9 HS players during these 3 years were âNot Rankedâ. Per Rivals (I chose Rivals at random for consistency), from 2017-2021, we recruited 14 HS players. 4 were raw, unproven international flyers, and one JUCO. 9 of the 14 were âNot Rankedâ. With only a âship or two in 2017, the staff seemingly mailed it in and gave zero F*cks about 2017, instead putting on a multi-year recruiting effort for Quinerly (who didnât even include us as a finalist), and Noah Locke, and we all remember David McCormack, etc (I still think Quinerly hurt Tony psychologically in a way weâll never truly appreciate).
To make matters worse, 9 out of the 14 ultimately transferred out of the program, including all of the highest-ranked recruits (except Reece). From 2017-2019, 7 out of 9 players were âNRâ, and 6 of those transferred, including the only two top 100 recruits over the three years. For context, from 2011-2016, the program saw 10 total transfers, 7 out of 3 in. In the subsequent six years, 10 transferred out and 7 transferred in. Obviously, the ârent-a-NBA playerâ for a season that inexplicably held this together is not sustainableâŚand weâre seeing it.
It gets worse: Iâm not counting 2010 because the program was in transition, new coaching staff, etc. For context, from 2011- to 2016, we had three transfers in (and we all know one got dismissed and the other transferred a second time, Thompson, SMDH). In the 7 years since, 2016-23, 11 transfers in.
Here is the real issue: Previously, losing Reuter, Barnette, Teven JonesâŚthatâs standard operating procedure for a P5. Let the kids get a chance. Now, weâre seeing top75 recruits bolt. Players that affect the program. And this isnât just one season. This is happening for 5 years on.
Now we have a body of work over an extended period to plot a real trend, and folks, it doesnât look good. We already know recruiting for the âfoundationâ is objectively worse:
| Years | Recruits | No Star | 3 stars | 4 stars | Rating : NR | Top 75 | Top 150 | Foreign | Transfers Out | Transfers In | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011-2016 | 6 | 20 | 1 | 7 | 12 | 7 | 6 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 3 |
| 2017-2022 | 6 | 18 | 1 | 6 | 11 | 9 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 7 |
Now, letâs look at the new reality of the program: feverishly signing half your starting 5 in the transfer portal annually. Is this an upward or downward trend?
2018: Key (yay)
2019: Hauser (yay)
2020: Murphy (yay)
2021: Frank/Gardner (hmm, letâs go)
2022: BVP (wait a minute)
2023: Groves/Rohde/Minor/Harris (ok, we may have a real problem)
This. We recruited horribly in 2017-2021 both in terms of evaluation and conversion. And tony has gotten hooked on rent a midmajor transfers in the post portal/nil era when we canât compete as well before for transfers.
Honesty, we should do better in high school recruiting and need to get back to evaluating better and not running off your high ceiling developing talent by taking a bvp or Rhode (this one may not be fair yet) or minor or Harris.
But with Tony likely retiring in 2-3 years Iâm not sure how we get back to foundation setting again.
Iâd love for Tony to hire an offensive coordinator type into the staff like what has become vogue.
But roster management is so much more of an issue.
I agree, but I think weâre seeing that weâve figured that out. But itâs hard when we have practically no vets with experience in our system. Itâs basically Beekman and young guys/transfers.
Weâre not going to take Harris or Minor type of transfers going forward. We did it because there were immediate needs when we took them. Rohde feels like he doesnât apply to this category. He has 3 years left, so heâs more like a freshman than mid/low major transfer.
The foundation/blueprint youâre talking about is what the staff is trying to do. Itâs just that weâre having to play heavy minutes to guys that Bennett ideally would want to play 5-10 minutes or just redshirt.
Will the foundation/blueprint be successful again? That will be answered this offseason and next season.
Did we pretty much keep all of our young core from transferring?
Did guys develop and improve in the offseason?
Those 2 questions will determine how things go in the final act of the Bennett era
Thatâs a big part of it. The other question will be whether or not Bennett makes any changes to system and scheme, whether to modernize or to better fit the players and skillsets on his roster. Hand in hand with that is what staff changes he makes, if any, to get outside perspective into his echo chamber.
Iâm not as much of a believer that the staff matters, at least to that extent. Itâs not like they donât have really good basketball people on staff. And theyâve toyed with different things at times. But TB always returns to his base. Itâs his call.
The only way I could see meaningful staff changes would be if Williford takes an HC job. His name is floating around as a candidate for possible openings at ODU and JMU. And if he were to leave, itâs also possible heâd take some folks with him like McKay and Sanchez did. Will be curious to see if heâs interested in those kind of openings this year. I donât really expect him to be, I know he likes being in Cville and seeing his boys play in HS. But heâs getting up around that age where itâs close to now or never, so I donât know.
Solid stuff Hooz. Definitely think retention of the right players is critical. One of my other concerns, is why we are missing on certain freshmen who come into the program. Some of the recruiting misses are easy to diagnose. Way less chance we hit on a NR than a four star or three star. Like you pointed out we are losing the future stars. What is going on when we miss on a Morsell (who is about the most UVA perfect recruit ever), a JAR (who was way over ranked, but has shown some ability at UGA) or Traudt (who was never given a chance to show us anything last year)? Those three right there, all still playing college basketball would have made us much better this year. But to be honest they werenât able to show flashes of their potential here, and that is troubling (I mean who would have guessed that Casey could shoot based on his two years here).
Would Traudt have helped us this year, though?
He hasnât exactly distinguished himself at Creighton, only scoring in double digits twice this season. And in the month of February heâs played a grand total of 14 minutes.
And we have 13 straight ACC winning records so a naive estimate is something like 11-12 wins with what we have coming back and there is room for upside.
I think his skill set would have helped here, but I probably should have used Igor as my example. I think third year Igor would hav been a strong player for us.
If Traudt stuck around, we could be worse. Either Minor or Groves doesnât come, probably Groves. Traudt probably plays ahead of BB. Eh, weâd probably be more or less the same.
It looks that way to me as well. The on court payoff for Traudt would have been next year and beyond.
Itâs called Leadership.
CTB is a better Tactical Coach than Strategic.