Definitely.
I’d say the issue is more that we’re reaching when we take guys like Washington. That was a bad miss.
I understand taking a shot on SJM, but that clearly didn’t work out, either.
Mitchell is OK, and could have continued to improve here, but like I said earlier... He doesn’t rebound/defend well enough to be an ACC 4 and he’s too slow at the 3 (and Hoard/Mucius would have been above him from day 1). I get why he’s leaving.
Reaching indeed. Composite rankings of our 2016 guys plus a few others:
Chill - 143 (avg rank of 31st best PG in class)
SJM - 101 (avg rank of 14th best C in class; our only 4*)
Rich - 212 (avg rank of 36th best SF in class)
DMit- 179 (avg rank of 41st best SF in class)
At one point this class was rated as high as 28th as on 9/15/15, but then dropped to 61st by mid-October. If you consider Key part of the '16 Class since he had to sit out a year, his numbers were even worse...337 composite and 81st best SG in his original '15 class. Probably would have cracked Top 225 \ 60 at his position in '16??
Here are few guys we missed on in addition to Giles:
Koby McEwen - composite rank of 64 (14th best PG in '16 Class, lost to Utah St)
Elijah Wright - composite rank of 107 (28th best SG in '16 Class, lost to Miss St & Ben Howland)
Kwe Parker - composite rank of 173 (34th best SG in '16 Class, lost to Tenn...maybe a good thing?)
Brandon Cyrus - comp rank of 195 (31st best SG in '16 Class, lost to DePaul...not sure if serious interest)
Other Offers we made to guards that were higher ranked than Top 100: Dennis Smith (haha), Lamar Peters (97), Terrence Ferguson (16, guffaw!).
Man Ben Howland was doin' werk in that Class, but not sure how well that's panning out. But still, many here wanted Howland as coach. IDK, I'd take 22-11 and an NIT bid for this sophomore class if we could have gotten Eli Wright and Lamar Peters. Of course, perhaps Brandon Childress would have ended up somewhere else, or had preferred walk-on status.