If Moore leaves, I think it is an indictment on our mission as a program. Not a death blow, but a nail in the coffin. How/why? The purpose of a program is to prepare a group of boys/men for the rest of their lives while winning basketball games in a competitive conference. To do that, you need to recruit players a year with NBA potential, period. You can follow one of several models:
* Duke/Kentucky - create an NBA factory. Every kid who comes expects to play in the NBA in 1-3 years and you grab 3 to 5 of the top 30 players every year. Class is a means to an end. The goal is only to maintain eligibility. A tutoring/mentoring system should guarantee at least one year of eligibility.
* Syracuse/Louisville/UNC/Wake/NC State - recruit a blend of 4 year and 1 -3 year players. All may have NBA aspirations but at least some of your recruits understand that their professional basketball career may only net them several hundred thousand dollars and they need to prepare themselves for the rest of their lives. THIS IS WHERE MANNING SITS. This is a tough spot because you may have kids on your roster who are guaranteed to make millions of dollar or at least hundreds of thousands of dollars and others who want that but may not have the talent or size. You have to have a two-tiered tutoring/mentoring system and kids have to understand what they are individually building towards. School has to be apart of that, and if you are in the program for 3+ years, you have to buy into the importance of the school degree. It may mean the difference between running bottom tier basketball camps for 15 years before settling into being a UPS driver and playing a few years in Belgium before getting a solid entry level job at a bank or insurance company. Huge difference. This is a hard place to manage a program's consistent success and requires a large apparatus and trust between players and coaches and players and educational advisors.
* UVa/Villanova/Butler/Xavier/ND - you are essentially recruiting 4 year players exclusively. There may be a Malcolm Brogdon in the bunch who is so mature and cerebral and talented enough to bust through and make it in the NBA, but that is not what you are thinking when you offer them a scholarship. You are thinking a 4 year progression where they get minutes frosh year, are in the top 8 rotation 2nd year and starters for two years. This requires elite coaching to succeed, period. But on the flip side, every student athlete is on the same page, the same progression. There isn't a 2-tier approach to handling scholly athletes. This is the easiest path AS LONG AS THE COACH IS AMAZING. The coach also has to feel extremely safe to go this path. There may be years where you win 16-18 games. And you are unlikely to win championships. This path is about creating and maintaining a proud program that does provide months of excitement and hope and is likely dashed 24 years out of 25 a round or two shy of expectation. But that is sort of okay but the journey has been fun.
We do not currently have the staff for path 3 IMO, but path 2 is the hardest to manage. You are more likely to capture lighting in a bottle one year and be severely disappointed the next. Upon reflection, I would prefer path 3. It suits Wake better, but I am okay with path 2. Path 1 isn't going to happen.
