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Basketball Recruiting Megathread 1.0 has run its course

Yeah, I agree with OGB on that point. The only point I was making on UNC is that they might be beatable in 12-13 which is good news for Wake.
 
OldGoldBeard said:
Put down the pom-poms, dude. Elite recruits are top-25, McDonald's A-A types, not fringe top 100 players like Rountree.
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Yeah, like Tony Woods and Ty Walker. Great point, seeing as we've had so much luck with five star prospects helping the long-term viability of our program and everything. Remember when CP* said he was coming back and then didn't, sending us back into the basketball stone-ages. How about all of those championships that Aminu and Loren Woods got us. LOL.

Like I said before, I think we have seen enough to say that our program's ceiling is a bit lower than y'all give it credit for being.


*I respect the hell out of CP and everything he has done for Wake since he left and what he did when he was in gold and black, but that was still a really badly handled situation.
 
If we want to compete with Duke and UNC then we need elite recruits, period.

ETA: ....and Pitt and Syracuse.
 
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Strickland, generally speaking higher ranked players are preferred to lower ranked ones even though the NBA early out program is a ball buster.
 
I agree with OGB's definition of elite recruit, but we've had 2 elite recruits the last 15 recruiting classes. I wouldn't expect Bz, or anyone at Wake for that matter, to start raking them in... Anton Gill may become an elite recruit and we have as good of a chance as anybody right now.
 
Strickland33 said:
Yeah, like Tony Woods and Ty Walker. Great point, seeing as we've had so much luck with five star prospects helping the long-term viability of our program and everything. Remember when CP* said he was coming back and then didn't, sending us back into the basketball stone-ages. How about all of those championships that Aminu and Loren Woods got us. LOL.

Like I said before, I think we have seen enough to say that our program's ceiling is a bit lower than y'all give it credit for being.


*I respect the hell out of CP and everything he has done for Wake since he left and what he did when he was in gold and black, but that was still a really badly handled situation.
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You're either a huge homer or just not very bright. There is no predictive value or causal correlation with how Ty Walker turned out with how [insert name of totally unrelated and unaffiliated elite recruit] will turn out. Or are you saying we shouldn't recruit any more 4-star players because recent 4-star recruits left school due to drinking problems (JTT) or had some combination of mono, poor conditioning, and general malaise (Tabb) or were just talented assholes who didn't feel like practicing hard (Stewart). And on and on.

We're talking about 16 and 17-year old kids here; some grow up and pan out, and some don't. It's silly to think that one kid's trajectory is at all indicative or correlated with another's based on some arbitrary "star ranking" bestowed by a random recruiting website. Otherwise, UNC and Duke wouldn't keep taking 5-star players and beating the living crap out of us year after year.
 
I'm just asking for some perspective here...

In 10 years we've had the following top-ranked (top-25 in position) players:

Chris Paul #1 PG
Al-Farouq Aminu #4 SF
Eric Williams #4 C
Ty Walker #4 C
Jeff Teague #8 PG
Ari Stewart #8 SF
Carson Desrosiers #9 C
James Johnson #9 SF
Tony Woods #10 C
Travis McKie #10 SF
Anthony Gurley #12 SG
Justin Gray #13 PG
Kevin Swinton #13 PF
JT Terrell #15 SG
Jamie Skeen #15 PF
Ish Smith #17 PG
Melvin Tabb #24 PF
Gary Clark #24 SG
Tony Chennault #25 PG
CJ Harris #25 SG
Kyle Visser #25 C

Additionally we recruited the following four star prospects:
Trent Strickland, Richard Joyce

Of these recruited players, everybody outside of CP3 largely underachieved relative to their recruiting ranking*, we lost four players to early-entry, and we lost seven players to transfer or expulsion.

Over this span of time, we've compiled a 174-110 record with a 5-5 record in the NCAA Tournament. We're made the semifinals in the ACC tournament twice and the quarterfinals four times with three first round exits.

Do with this what you will, but this is the context upon which we are basing our assumptions and expectations.


*I'm considering Ty a bust and calling out Big E, especially, and Kyle, to a much lesser extent, for developing so slowly. Furthermore, Teague and JJ, for as good as they were, don't have any ACC or NCAA post-season success to show for it, and don't even get me started on AFA's potential relative to his actual gameplay.
 
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Only 4 of those players were actually elite recruits.
 
TBR said:
Only 4 of those players were actually elite recruits.
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So, what makes you think that Wake has every had or can consistently get elite recruits?

If we've never experienced this phenomena, then what makes people think we'll ever have it? Seriously, we've never been able to out-recruit UNC or Duke. Hell, we haven't even been able to out-recruit GT over the past 10 years.

I'll take victories like our 2012 class (relative to our 2011 season) where I can get them. We cheer for a team that has only made it to Elite 8 twice and the Sweet 16 five times in 20 years... We're not UNC and Duke and, unless something REALLY changes, we're not going to be UNC or Duke.
 
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Strickland33 said:
So, what makes you think that Wake has every had or can consistently get elite recruits?

If we've never experienced this phenomena, then what makes people think we'll ever have it? Seriously, we've never been able to out-recruit UNC or Duke. Hell, we haven't even been able to out-recruit GT over the past 10 years.
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I don't expect us to be recruiting like UNC and UK, but in order to elevate the program we will have to start getting elite recruits on a semi-regular basis. I'm talking one every year or two, not 4 every year. It's definitely doable for a program with Wake's history and resources.

If we aren't trying to raise the bar then we should shut down the program right now.
 
No way we should set our expectations at a top 25 recruit every one or two years.
 
TBR said:
I don't expect us to be recruiting like UNC and UK, but in order to elevate the program we will have to start getting elite recruits on a semi-regular basis. I'm talking one every year or two, not 4 every year. It's definitely doable for a program with Wake's history and resources.

If we aren't trying to raise the bar then we should shut down the program right now.
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I added this late, but:

I'll take victories like our 2012 class (relative to our 2011 season) with two nice head-to-head recruiting victories, where I can get them. We cheer for a team that has only made it to Elite 8 twice and the Sweet 16 five times in 20 years... We're not UNC and Duke and, unless something REALLY changes, we're not going to be UNC or Duke.
 
Strickland33 said:
I added this late, but:

I'll take victories like our 2012 class (relative to our 2011 season) with two nice head-to-head recruiting victories, where I can get them. We cheer for a team that has only made it to Elite 8 twice and the Sweet 16 five times in 20 years... We're not UNC and Duke and, unless something REALLY changes, we're not going to be UNC or Duke.
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This class is a great building block.
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
No way we should set our expectations at a top 25 recruit every one or two years.
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That hasn't been our recruiting trajectory, though. We recruit top-25 talent almost every year (2011 and 2004 are the only exceptions and there are legitimate reasons for both). In fact, by your metric, we're doing quite well. That said, we've recruited well to how badly we consistently underachieve!

2012 - 4/4/4/3/3/3 (Bz)
2011 - 3/2/2 (Bz/Dino)
2010 - 4/4/4/4/3 (Dino)
2009 - 4/3/2 (Dino)
2008- 5/5/4 (Dino/Skip)
2007- 4/4/3 (Skip)
2006- 4/4/4/3/3/3 (Skip)
2005- 4/3/3/2 (Skip)
2004- 3 (Skip)
2003- 5/3/3/3 (Skip)
2002- 4/4/4/4/3 (Skip/Dave)
 
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So I agree that this is a mediocre program and has been for quite sometime, but are you happy with that? I am not.
 
I don't know what you're disagreeing with Strickland, I'm saying that is a ludicrous goal/expectation. All I was saying was that statsheet.com has the RSCI ranking for all our recruits since 1998. Only Chris Paul (Winston Salem native mind you) and Aminu were top 25 RSCI recruits.

And we have had super-talented teams regardless. Probably buoyed by those two guys of course.
 
TBR said:
So I agree that this is a mediocre program and has been for quite sometime, but are you happy with that? I am not.
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I'm not happy with it, but I don't think unreal expectations are a logical progression from unhappiness. How many schools like Wake Forest (academic profile, small school, location advantage/disadvantage/conference standing) develop into legitimate powerhouses? Duke may be the only one. Everybody else (Stanford, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Rice, to name a few) are pretty much similarly positioned to us.

That's why, until we lock ourselves up a Coach K-esque figure at the helm, I'm going to keep my expectations reasonable and be pleasantly surprised when they're exceeded.

Otherwise, what's the point?
 
Strickland33 said:
I'm not happy with it, but I don't think unreal expectations are a logical progression from unhappiness. How many schools like Wake Forest (academic profile, small school, location advantage/disadvantage/conference standing) develop into legitimate powerhouses? Duke may be the only one. Everybody else (Stanford, Notre Dame, Vanderbilt, and Rice, to name a few) are pretty much similarly positioned to us.

That's why, until we lock ourselves up a Coach K-esque figure at the helm, I'm going to keep my expectations reasonable and be pleasantly surprised when they're exceeded.

Otherwise, what's the point?
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I think there's a difference between long term and short term expectations. I don't expect us to be competing neck and neck with UNC and Duke within the next 5 years, but I would like to see us move towards that direction. I don't see that happening.
 
Fuck Your Couch said:
I don't know what you're disagreeing with Strickland, I'm saying that is a ludicrous goal/expectation. All I was saying was that statsheet.com has the RSCI ranking for all our recruits since 1998. Only Chris Paul (Winston Salem native mind you) and Aminu were top 25 RSCI recruits.

And we have had super-talented teams regardless. Probably buoyed by those two guys of course.
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I'm just disagreeing with the popular notion on these boards that we're better than we are and that we recruit and can recruit better than we actually do. There is literally data that speaks to the contrary, so I'm just not understanding the perspective of a lot of pessimists on these boards that seem to skew actual expectations relative to our past performances over a sample size of 20-seasons.

CP buoyed a great team, but Josh Howard (NR?), Tim Duncan (NR), Darius Songalia (#58) were hardly elite recruits and definitely were the anchors on their respective teams (cases can be made for similarly lower ranked players, too). Our successes with Aminu were more a result of Jeff Teague, Ish, and even JJ, in my opinion, than Aminu.
 
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