I love the boneyard...first its the "staff is spreading themselves too thin" by going after too many recruits to now "too many eggs in one basket"... all in this in a matter of a few weeks.
The staff has a game plan... you would think after getting more or less the exact pieces they need to be a really good team this year it would give people the confidence to trust KO.
We are not going to win 100% of the recruiting battles (no where close to 100%). No one does not even UK., just look at their top misses this year, but a couple of misses does not mean the staff does not know what they are doing.
Yeah, that plan is, after going after a **t load of rising HS seniors and preps who started off pro-UConn till they're reminded how much our conference s*cks, they hit the 5th year senior mother-load again.
I'm kidding...well sort of.
Now I don't know if KO is putting all his eggs in Gilbert's basket, but I think he felt he found some under-the-radar talent that appeared impressed with him, the UConn program and getting the UConn offer. He might not have anticipated him blowing up so much and having to battle the likes of UL for his services. Ricky P & UL are beginning to be the thorn in KO's side. Seems things go in cycles, but every few years there's a program or two that just seem to like the same recruits UConn likes. Nova and Texas come to mind. The combination of the Florida schools (UF, FSU & UM) also seemed to battle us for our plan-A & B recruits. MD for years was another battle ground. JC would tend to drop out of the sweepstakes with the likes of UK, KU, UNC, Dook and Zona, realizing that hanging in on the recruits that these programs liked, especially the ones that would hold off till signing week to decide, would likely not end in our favor. Sometimes he did go all in if he really wanted someone, like Rudy. One thing that JC was masterful was to narrow things down to about 3 recruits at a position of need. He'd try to press for an early decision with the one he liked the most, but would not make it so obvious. Then by around August or so, he'd pretty much tell the 3, whoever says yes first gets the ship. I can't remember who all the PGs were one year, but we landed Taleik in one of those battles. I think Marcus Williams was a similar situation. AJ Price was a tad different. JC was after a few PGs, but clearly liked AJ who committed relatively early where he did not have to lay out the ultimatum. With that said, he went hard after some big time PGs but ended up settling for Kemba, Bazz & Boat. That's not a bad run of back-up plan PGs, if you ask me. Now I realize that Kemba ended up a Burger AA, but he rose up the rankings late summer. And JC was after some higher profile PGs before he went radar lock on Kemba.
I know I sound like a broken record, but if it wasn't for our conference affiliation, I have little doubt that KO would be cleaning up early with many of his Plan-A & B recruits. Recruits and their parents just seem to love KO, and I think his recruiting would be similar to other blue-blood programs where it appears they get to pick their recruits compared to the reverse. I think people gotta stop kicking KO and his staff to the curb saying they're doing this and not doing that. The fact that many
talented recruits are listing UConn early and some are putting us in their short lists, proving IMO that they're working hard and doing a nice job. The recruiting restrictions during the past year or so, put them behind other programs, but with the 2016 & 17 classes you can see the impact of not having those restrictions, though we might again see the impact of having to go up against P5 programs and find ourselves on the outside looking in. Now losing some recruits to the likes of VCU and other non-P5s with the 2015 class was a tad disconcerting, but I think this time around we're either going to land some of these plan-A and B recruits or find ourselves losing them to some top P5 programs.
It's still early. Let's see if they can land the likes of Alterique, Bailey and/or Diallo before we draw any conclusions.
