The peculiar thing about basketball among the major team sports is that you only need to recruit two or three high quality players each year to build or sustain a program. Recruiting more than that, as we are finding out, does two things, it ties up scholarships and limits a program in recruitment in years that may be more promising for elite recruits, and it limits the minutes that you can give these new recruits when they arrive, bright-eyed and eager to be on the floor wearing that green and gold.
Programs get over balanced by bringing in big classes, and it can have a dampening effect on high school stars who want to go to a program where they can get on the floor. In most cases, even the best of the stars coming in are not ready for what they are facing on the Division I level. Perhaps the most celebrated recruit in recent high school ranks was Brianna Stewart, and she struggled for much of her frosh year at UCONN, before winning four national championships and three MVPs. It is not as easy as it looks but that is hard to sell to elite recruits in any sport.
I like this frosh class a lot, but to think that five or six players are going to be better for four years than other programs who are recruiting as selectively and taking advantage of the absence of your program in loaded years is not wise. Stanford, as an example, has three McDonald's AA coming in, the top player in the country and a power forward who is a YouTube dunker, plus another player who is the top three point shooter in the state and led her team to a championship, disposing of Aquira DeCosta's team and Haley Jones' team (Jones is the top ranked player in the country this year and many thought that she was last year). Stanford has locked up the top player next year, a 6'4" do everything interior player from Oregon, as well. The Cardinal will be a tough out in another year and a top team the year after. That is just one example of how recruiting can almost overnight change the collegiate basketball landscape.