All of our best teams have been built with impact multi-year transfers around a home-grown nucleus. It's hard to build that nucleus when you're losing your highest-usage players every year.

Outside of Quincy Miller, who was at best the fourth-best player on the second Elite Eight team, our one-and-done type talents have (in their first year on campus) missed the tournament twice and gotten bounced in the round of 32 as No. 1 and 3 seeds, respectively. That's not exactly a ringing endorsement for that recruiting strategy.

And if Perry and Isaiah hadn't come back for a second year, it would look considerably worse.

I agree. Maybe the hype was over done and/or maybe the expectation level was unrealistically high, but without exception to date none of our sure fire one and dones have come close to living up to their hype in my opinion. Jeremy Sochan was a valuable contributor on our '21-'22 team, but he came in as an expected 2 and done (at least) who turned into a one and done. I realize players like Kevin Durant are once in a generation types, but we've had enough of these at this point that you'd think at least one of them would've turned out a lot closer to that kind of an impact player as opposed to being an inconsistent at best disappointment to one degree or another.

How does this compare with other teams results?

Are we caring worse or better or same?

IowaBear said:

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I was pretty pleased with Austin and Perry as far as what they did at BU. The other 3 are rather forgettable

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But that's likely only because they stayed a second year. If they hadn't, their legacy would have been decent stats for two of the few non-tournament teams we've had since 2008.

I'm thankful both stayed. In doing so, they became key parts of two of our five best teams of the Scott Drew era.

We aren't balancing it too well so far but its not abnormal. Duke has been mixed with it, Kentucky not good, and to their point KU has ramped down (probably not purposely but bc of the violation issues) their level of recruit and has found even more success.

Not going to study Unc's roster over the years but I think they had 5 stars that were playing their second or third year mixed with 4 star guys during their champ runs. So if you can get 5 star guys for a few years mixed with 4 star and transfer "program" guys that seems to be the sweet spot so not driven by one and dones. Villanova same situation as I think Brunson was a 5* but stayed multiple years as didn't fit the nba prototype. This was mixed with developed 4*s with multiple years in the program. That seems to be the sweet spot right now. Even Tex having more success with the experience model. They were stuck in one and one limbo for several years prior.

Mixing in one and dones is difficult but can be the plug to get the team over the top. Ark is a little shaky with it but still playing. Alabama is having success with it so far and has a great chance to win it all. Alabama's seems to be the exception here so possible but not likely.

Its very hard to plan for a 5 star that is a possible one and done v staying an extra year. The 5 stars we have coming in next are more borderline so will probably have to perform to go really high which is good for both them and the program. If we get Johnson, that would be a guaranteed one and done.. even more a lock than George. But if we can get transfer bigs and a few of those 5 * guys to stay a second year paired with Johnson' first year.. that's probably the best team in the country. Also an exception case probably as Johnson's game seems much more polished and high D1 ready than most freshman. Would be a pretty seamless plug in with solid coaching.

George is a potential guy so just showing those 5-6 big scoring games and early year semblance of secondary passing is probably enough. Which is worst case for both parties as we didn't get the consistent high performance to justify the pick. Wouldn't be shocked if the inefficiency causing some slide there so we'll see soon enough.

I think our staff had the right plan. We didn't go all in on one and done guys. We tried to balance our roster composition with a team full of 4 year players and transfers. We only had 1 "expected" one and done player each recruiting class the past 2 seasons, KB and then Key (Sochan was probably expected to stick around 2 years).

A lot of misplaced blame and hostility was directed toward Keyonte this season because of team flaws. Missing on the trio of Lohner, Turner, and Loveday was crippling. Flow and EJ being shells of their former selves was crippling. The fact that all 4 of Keyonte, Cryer, Love, and Flagler were average to below average perimeter defenders was cripping. We had a team of ill-fitting parts and a lot of fans heaped all of the blame on Keyonte for not magically fixing all the team's flaws. I am talking about true fans who I'm giving the benefit of the doubt not trolls just on here to trash players and stir the pot.

Looking to next year, Miro and Walter might initially be viewed as 2 or 3 year guys by our staff. Depending on how they play they could potentially leave after one year like Sochan. IMO this is the sweet spot, they will be motivated to show out and put themselves on the draft radar. If they do their excellent play will benefit us at the same time.

I agree and they were very close to winning in 2022. If Jon and LJ don't go down I think we win that title. It's a very fine line.

Next few years will be trickier filling the gap. I agree they will be close to hitting the sweet spot in 24' if they add Johnson and the wings with seasoned guys. Portal should help and while we can't know for sure yet I don't anticipate three big misses in recruiting. Even if they fall short most should be able to contribute.

It really is wild to think they've been investing in George since 17'. For hope of one special six month run and now it's over. A crazy business

parch said:

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Don't misunderstand - I'm not saying they've all been bad, or even that some of them haven't been good and even at times very good. But we have yet to have a single one of our highest-rated so-called star recruits really take over, find a hugely productive role in the system and live up to elite billing on a consistent basis.

Our best guys have invariably been slept-on transfers or guys on that upper middle class tier, 3* or 4* guys who've developed over time. One of them is sitting on the coaches' side of the bench right now in Tweety Carter.

They weren't all 1-and-dones, but certainly I wouldn't put any of these guys in a top 5 most important players in Scott Drew's tenure. Don't know how many would even make the top 10. This is generally how I'd rank them in terms of impact.

1. Perry Jones
2. Keyonte George
3. Quincy Miller
4. Kendall Brown
5. Isaiah Austin (I get this one is an outlier for reasons)

Given how much time it takes coaches to recruit these guys, and how many resources you have to pour into them over years and years just to get your hat on the selection table (Alvin Brooks started his relationship with Keyonte six years ago), it's fair to expect more of them than anyone else.

And this isn't necessarily a wholesale indictment of recruiting 5* freshmen, but specifically the ones we've pulled have disappointed relative to the peer standard. Walsh, Walker, Miller, Black (just off the top of my head) were all 5* blue chips and all had more impactful years than Key (or any of our 5* guys ever), integrated into the team ethos and are currently leaders on teams that are still dancing.

This is particularly relevant because our program is turning this direction. We currently have three elite 5* recruits coming to campus in the next 18 months, with a possible fourth on the way in Tre Johnson, one of four recruits in the last 10 years 247 is grading at 1.000 (Chet Holmgren, RJ Barrett & Andrew Wiggins are the others, if you're skeptical).

You can recruit elite, star AAU guys and win titles, but programs often sacrifice their time and resources to those guys at the expense of real stem-to-stern team building. Drew has earned the benefit of the doubt on the latter, but as to the former it's fair to be somewhat disappointed in the return on our largest investments. Since our strategy does seem to be shifting toward these elite kids who've been on the social media highlight circuit their entire youth careers and told consistently their game is gold-plated, it's fair to wonder what this program will look like in another five years.

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Tweety Carter was actually our first McDonalds AA so he should be considered in that upper echelon, not necessarily a 5 star, but a 4+

parch said:

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Don't misunderstand - I'm not saying they've all been bad, or even that some of them haven't been good and even at times very good. But we have yet to have a single one of our highest-rated so-called star recruits really take over, find a hugely productive role in the system and live up to elite billing on a consistent basis.

Our best guys have invariably been slept-on transfers or guys on that upper middle class tier, 3* or 4* guys who've developed over time. One of them is sitting on the coaches' side of the bench right now in Tweety Carter.

They weren't all 1-and-dones, but certainly I wouldn't put any of these guys in a top 5 most important players in Scott Drew's tenure. Don't know how many would even make the top 10. This is generally how I'd rank them in terms of impact.

1. Perry Jones
2. Keyonte George
3. Quincy Miller
4. Kendall Brown
5. Isaiah Austin (I get this one is an outlier for reasons)

Given how much time it takes coaches to recruit these guys, and how many resources you have to pour into them over years and years just to get your hat on the selection table (Alvin Brooks started his relationship with Keyonte six years ago), it's fair to expect more of them than anyone else.

And this isn't necessarily a wholesale indictment of recruiting 5* freshmen, but specifically the ones we've pulled have disappointed relative to the peer standard. Walsh, Walker, Miller, Black (just off the top of my head) were all 5* blue chips and all had more impactful years than Key (or any of our 5* guys ever), integrated into the team ethos and are currently leaders on teams that are still dancing.

This is particularly relevant because our program is turning this direction. We currently have three elite 5* recruits coming to campus in the next 18 months, with a possible fourth on the way in Tre Johnson, one of four recruits in the last 10 years 247 is grading at 1.000 (Chet Holmgren, RJ Barrett & Andrew Wiggins are the others, if you're skeptical).

You can recruit elite, star AAU guys and win titles, but programs often sacrifice their time and resources to those guys at the expense of real stem-to-stern team building. Drew has earned the benefit of the doubt on the latter, but as to the former it's fair to be somewhat disappointed in the return on our largest investments. Since our strategy does seem to be shifting toward these elite kids who've been on the social media highlight circuit their entire youth careers and told consistently their game is gold-plated, it's fair to wonder what this program will look like in another five years.

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I think it might be better for all of us to take a breath after a tough end of season loss. I'm starting to get my blood pressure back to normal so I would like to point out a few things.

1. We want to find blame for the loss. I get that. But the problem was not with one player.

2. Nor is the fact that the higher prospect Freshman struggled last night. "Freshman," as the women's coach who's name we have all forgotten once said, "will remind you they are freshman." It is extremely rare when a Freshman takes the key position on a championship team. Jalen Suggs was heading in that direction. Y'all remember how that last game turned out for him? Looking back over the past three years, Keyonte's stats for the season look pretty good when compared to same level and better guard talent: Scottie Barnes avg. 10.3ppg at FSU, Terrence Clarke 9.6, Jalen Suggs 14.4, Kenny Chandler 13.9.. The two higher rated guards this year? Whitehead at Duke (had some injuries) 8.3pg, and did not attempt a shot in their tournament loss. Cason Wallace had a better last game, averaged 11.7ppg. How does Keyonte's numbers compare? 15.3ppg, 4.2 reb., 2.8 assists pg.

3. There does seem to be a correlation statistically with top 3 talent. You can go back 30 years, and there are only a couple of times has a team won a championship with a Freshman rated 3rd or higher--Anthony Davis and Kentucky, you may remember that one. There may be a couple of reasons for this, one being that player ratings are all geared for NBA which is looking at overall potential. Holmgren last year was a great talent, but even without the injury, it was going to be years before he matured into a dominant player. The same is true for the European Center this year.

4. Despite our frustration, it does no good to think about changing focus away from one and dones. The fact is, pretty much every player on the court last night has dreams about playing in the NBA. We had great success with players who stayed another year--Butler and Mitchell. But neither one of them was a high level pick the year before the championship. They didn't have to turn down a $20mm guaranteed contract, which is good because they wouldn't have. I suspect coaching staff expected Sochan to need 2 years to get to the NBA. He moved up quickly. The key is not to right off the signing the best talent that fits the program, it is finding the balance between young players and old, key scorers and role players. Something Drew and company have proven time and again to be masters at doing, I am confident they will find a way in the NIL and Transfer Portal era...

Made this exact point in the game thread the other night.

We have 3 5 Star guys that will likely be on the court in the next 2 years. If the trend continues, they will only have a few months to gel with the team, play lazy defense, not have enough time to develop their game, and then leave.

Hope that isn't the case but it is a concern. To quote Moneyball "if we play like the Yankees in here, then we will lose to the Yankees out there".

You are wrong that all 5 star guys play lazy defense.

You saying George came in wanting to be "the guy" is another example of you talking out of your a$$ and projecting your personal dislike of a player. Our offensive system is built around guards and the freedom to use their skills is a selling point in our recruiting. Our guards will always be high usage players in our system. If you don't like that, take it up with Coach Drew.

bear2be2 said:

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That was never true of George, who came in thinking he was the guy.

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How do you know this?

There are under-performing and over-performing teams but every coach wants the best talent. Drew is no different.

What is different is the impact of the portal and NIL on college basketball. Why in the world would anyone invest in 5 star freshman that are one and done when you can get an experienced smaller college talent that is proven and has the fire to develop. NBA isn't interested in development but talent.

The balance is somewhere in between. You must have both and Drew needs to sign 3-4 players that are better than what he has on the bench who can play now.

Mitch Henessey said:

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Underwhelmed compared to what? Fans' misaligned expectations?

Our fanbase seems to think every 5* freshman is going to be a game-wrecker like Carmelo Anthony or Anthony Davis. Those two guys are generational talents, and no other school has had a freshman like them in the past 20 years, either. Just because our guys aren't them doesn't mean they've been disappointments.

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Nobody here was saying before this season that Keyonte George would shoot 37.5 percent from the field, 34 percent from 3 and have more turnovers than assists while playing poor defense.

In fact, many of his most ardent defenders on this thread spent all offseason telling us he was going to be our best player. Keyonte had his moments this year, but he was not the player he was hyped to be, particularly at the end of the year, when he was just plain bad.

If I had told everyone here that Keyonte's one season on campus would look almost exactly like Al Freeman's one year at NC State, where he was strictly an inefficient volume scorer, nobody would have been super jazzed about that. To suggest now that everyone who expected more was wrong is absolute revisionist history.

You can't spend years hyping a kid up as the greatest scoring talent in the history of a successful program and then get upset when people are frustrated that he is merely an above-average player -- and a frustrating one at that. It wasn't people like me who expected him to be a superstar. But I did expect him to be much more efficient than he was.

EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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That was never true of George, who came in thinking he was the guy.

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How do you know this?

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Because both his words and actions tell us this. He led a team with two elite veteran shooters/scorers in field goal attempts and 3-point attempts while posting field goal percentages that didn't remotely warrant that kind of shot volume. And he consistently forced jump shots and drives at inopportune times, when he would have been better off swinging the ball and working the offense.

And if his play wasn't enough to tell us how he viewed himself and his role on the team, he did so explicitly after the season when he said the following in reference to Adam Flagler: "I kind of gave myself up and let him run the team." He viewed it as a sacrifice to defer to an all-conference player with a national championship to his credit.

Look, I don't hate Keyonte George. I've said repeatedly I think he's a good kid and was largely a good teammate this year. I've even pushed back against claims that he's a selfish player. But like most five-star freshmen who have been told all their lives how great they are, he came in with a vastly inflated view of how his game would translate to high-major DI basketball, and he never made any adjustments to those expectations as the year progressed. He continued to take bad shots and make poor decisions all year as though his season-long shooting woes were a slump. Well, they weren't. He was just an inefficient volume scorer.

I don't think he's selfish. I think he's overly confident in a game that's not nearly as polished presently as he thinks it is. He needed a coaching staff that would reign that in and get his shot selection and decision making in line with his performance and present capabilities. But that's just not who Scott Drew is.

Drew's a phenomenal college basketball coach, but almost all of our most disappointing seasons have featured ball-dominant, score-first players who he either could or would not reign in. And when the ball sticks in this offense, it's not nearly as effective as the efficiency numbers would lead you to believe, particularly in a year where we're not getting a bunch of offensive rebounds.

I have no dog in this fight…. But I'll say this Key took I think like 2 or 3 more shots per game than our all b12 guard Flagler. That alone probably tells you he thought of himself as the alpha dog or at least thought he needed to be. Both Cryer and Flagler should have been taking a good 2-3 shots per game more than Key

Well, I guess it's good that he's gone.

I don't remember it that way. He was actively deferring to the other guys early. The extra stuff started in the Va game as we completely bogged down. That is when he started to try to make stuff happen out of desperation.

The rest of year was up and down but I agree with some of the other points. To's, bad shots, and defense was a consistent theme. But still think with a seasoned pg and vocal leader things would have fit much better. I'm sure they're all frustrated because it wasn't really a good fit this year.

KD but Tex was hopelessly mismanaged so it didn't matter. But yeah there are only a handful. Rose for Memphis was borderline as well but that's about it.

Mitch Henessey said:

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Underwhelmed compared to what? Fans' misaligned expectations?

Our fanbase seems to think every 5* freshman is going to be a game-wrecker like Carmelo Anthony or Anthony Davis. Those two guys are generational talents, and no other school has had a freshman like them in the past 20 years, either. Just because our guys aren't them doesn't mean they've been disappointments.

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This. Unrealistic expectations along with some envy and some low IQ among our fan base.

bear2be2 said:

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EvilTroyAndAbed said:

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bear2be2 said:

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That was never true of George, who came in thinking he was the guy.

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How do you know this?

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I don't think he's selfish. I think he's overly confident in a game that's not nearly as polished presently as he thinks it is. He needed a coaching staff that would reign that in and get his shot selection and decision making in line with his performance and present capabilities. But that's just not who Scott Drew is.

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I think this is exactly right which is why I don't lay the blame entirely on the freshman (not implying you are). I thought it could be navigated but just didn't quite fit. This is an instance Tang could have helped. A Vital or a Davion on the team would have helped that too.

100% agreed with this.

Keyonte George had his flaws, but to say he wasn't ready to compete at a high-major level is laughable. He was big 12 freshman of the year.

Quinton said:

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KD but Tex was hopelessly mismanaged so it didn't matter. But yeah there are only a handful. Rose for Memphis was borderline as well but that's about it.

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Michael Beasley was the best college freshman I've ever seen, including Durant, who was unbelievable at Texas. Beasley's college success didn't translate to the NBA for a lot of reasons, but that dude was a man among boys from the second he stepped on a college court.

Bingo! Craw as telling anyone and everyone about George being this unreal talent. These expectations were pushed by… you guessed it craw. Doing the same with Walter and Little.