I donāt want to debate the past too much, but you are kind of handwaving away the 2021 NCAA tournament that had the most upsets for a single tournament and the facts that UVa wasnāt allowed to practice as a team in the week leading up to the tournament due to a positive COVID test and they were the last team to arrive in Indianapolis prior to games starting.
No, Iām not bitter about the missed opportunity in that pandemic tournament at all. Why do you ask?
Shorter Tony: āare you dawgs (in my system) or notā?
This is true. I definitely get that we couldnāt practice due to Typhoid McKoy 
but our defense was also *not great during that game as we werenāt able to stop BVP.
I guess my question is- which team were you more fearful of: The 2020 with Mamadi, Braxton Key, and Huff in the post defensively who won 11/12 and 2nd in the ACC also had the season cancelled and or the 2021 team with Huff, Murphy and Hauser in the post who did win the ACC regular season and had a better shooting offenseā¦That effing dook game still pisses me off.
Posting it here to spare my beloved UVA recruiting thread.
I still donāt think itās NIL related. Unless you argue NIL helps players stay through rough times.
We actually have modest to decent NIL, probably above average, but not of it is guaranteed upfront in huge amounts like other schools Im assuming.
Id still argue the 2017-2021 recruiting misses and trying to recover from a crater of recruiting shortcomings is more explanatory. Weve been landing top 150 kids out of HS. Just need to get them as old veterans
https://twitter.com/trillydonovan/status/1744479795696541985
Yeah what does embrace even mean? for which guys would it have made a difference? Would trust HGN on this front - that Virginia is very solid on NIL compared to P5 but they donāt lead with it in recruiting.
Can anyone specifically point to players that we did not pursue / missed on recruiting because of NIL? I realize that there are many variables that go into a decision but Trilly makes it sound like we are missing players purely for NIL?
London Johnson and keeping Kadin. Thats about it. (but of course @HoozGotNext chime in with the actual answer)
No one we missed out on specifically. Maybe if we offered more we could have landed some (like Dilione and Kon) but those are just assumptions
I do think NIL could be a tool to keep guys happy. We could even started a redshirt NIL collective.
At this point, sample size is so small both ways its hard to have confidence in any explanation. However, if its coincidence, its kinda weird its been on-going since the end of last January.
Could the statement mean we are very solid but could be that much better to where we could get some of the big time transfers if we made NIL a priority?
I agree that the national college hoops folks (who donāt follow us that closely) over-emphasize the NIL thing when it comes to our post-natty struggles, and even if we just zoom in to this year. I think the bigger issue as @Hooandtrue and others point out was a general downturn in HS recruiting (missing on targets, missing on evals, etc.) that we seem to be past ā¦ (hopefullyā¦).
I also think a lack of continuity has hurt us, too, but thatās probably mostly a knock-on effect of some of the recruiting struggles / missed evals. But itās also probably partly a result of the transfer rule changes.** (One thing I donāt think is a significant factor is NIL for retaining guys we already have; didnāt seem to be a major issue for guys leaving, though a little monetary incentive canāt hurt, I suppose)
But the NIL stuff is a factor, I think, too. Folks keep asking what guys we missed out on because of NIL? But thatās like asking me which specific megayachts or Caribbean islands I havenāt bought because Iām not a billionaire. I mean ā¦ all of them, right?
We needed a skilled, experienced actual post player on this team desperately. Right? Right. Now go back and look at all the ābest transfer listsā - Athletic, CBS, ESPN, whatever. You have to get pretty far to get to Jordan Minor. And the guys before him just werenāt in the cards. For various reasons, to be fair, but a biggie for many of them is that we donāt really play in the NIL-forward transactional recruiting game. (NIL is not the only issue we donāt get those guys, but Iād put it at #1).
And this one is less fair**, but given how this year has played out, and given that we have a senior PG and another likely / possible first rounder gone after this year, in retrospect, Iād have really liked to have a stud scoring guard/wing in the portal. But again, those guys tend to be pretty NIL forward.
** Less fair b/c when we were fishing, Dunn as a first rounder seemed fairly unlikely and Reece wasnāt even definitely coming back. Rhode made sense to me as a longer term playā¦
(in other words, the answer to @tlgoudyās question is āyesā)
Just my two cents, and while we donāt ābuyā players, the perception that we donāt āembrace NILā can be a competitive disadvantage on the recruiting trail I would imagine.
This is true if you look at the overall rankings, but if you look at the by position (at least on 247) rankings, Jordan Minor was the 3rd ranked PF and his composite score put him just under Shedrick and Handlogten. There were certainly question marks about how Minorās game would translate that have become glaring with hindsight, but based on the information available at the time he looked at like a serviceable, if not good, addition to the team.
He still looks like a serviceable addition. But I think that 247 ranking was an outlier
āI donāt know if thereās too much tinkering or trying stuff newā 
Iām sure CTB will make me look like a fool, I just hope itās sooner rather than later
While I believe we may do pretty good in the NIL game it is not being advertised. In fact itās just the opposite as what Trilly said above. True or not itās not helpful. And Iām pretty sure that Tony is not involved with it at all. Look at the players we have now. How many of them do you think NIL was important too. If we are going to play the game more like others do it then we need to let it be known that we are open for business. I just donāt think we go after the top transfers because we wonāt pay the kind of money they will bring
Did we make a run at Dickinson? Would have seemed to be the banger we needed.
There was never going to be any mutual interest there. Not just NIL (although he got the bag) although williford tried.
I would have loved to see Dickerson execute a hard hedge LOL (we need more Mamadi/Gill type forwards at the 4-5, not these jumbo bigs at Purdue and what not).
As a Hoo, his lone superpower (being able to foul with impunity and draw fouls on players 10 feet away) would have disappeared, rendering him essentially useless.
We definitely need a big bruiser and another shooter . Iām also 95% certain Dunn goes pro.
I read about how weak the draft is this year and 247 has Dunn projected at going 12th. Whoās going to replace him? Next year may be worse than this year without Dunn and Reece and whoever else may transfer
If Dunn stays in the first round, he must go. Grab the money and donāt look back. It is a big surprise given how his jump shot seems badly broken ā¦ heck, his FTs are a big adventure. He has 2 airballs this season and he barely scraped iron on one of them against NCSU. Did I read somewhere he was known as a shooter in HS??? If true, not a ringing endorsement of our offensive development. Anyway, we need to plan that he is gonesky.