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Wake Forest Basketball Recruiting: Juke Harris Commits!!

It takes getting 2-3 top level guys to go from the bottom to the upper middle in the conference.

Without a big guy, we will be marginally better unless one frosh simply explodes.

With a new salary structure in the G-League, many/most players will take the money. If it was the old G-League pay, not that many would do it. If the $250-750,000 salary projections are accurate, I would guess a majority of top players will go.

Given that Adam Silver has been floating that $2.5B will be the low end of an expansion franchise fee, the G-League numbers could be even higher.
 
Arguing in these absolutes is so ridiculous. UVA's climb to their first Sweet 16 and ACC Championship under Bennet was led by Joe Harris, Malcolm Brogdon, and Anthony Gill - all outside the top 100. Perrantes and Hall helped carry the team forward over the next few years, also both well outside the top 100.

Tobey and Anderson were decently ranked but more in the 50-100 zone, not elite recruits. Once they started winning they started getting the Diakite's and Kyle Guy's of the world.

I doubt Wake gets to just skip the whole "building a program" thing. I'll take McCray types all day long instead of going all-in for some flawed top 20 guy who might ditch the program in a year or 2.
 
DCDeac said:
Arguing in these absolutes is so ridiculous. UVA's climb to their first Sweet 16 and ACC Championship under Bennet was led by Joe Harris, Malcolm Brogdon, and Anthony Gill - all outside the top 100. Perrantes and Hall helped carry the team forward over the next few years, also both well outside the top 100.

Tobey and Anderson were decently ranked but more in the 50-100 zone, not elite recruits. Once they started winning they started getting the Diakite's and Kyle Guy's of the world.

I doubt Wake gets to just skip the whole "building a program" thing. I'll take McCray types all day long instead of going all-in for some flawed top 20 guy who might ditch the program in a year or 2.
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The odds of you consistently competing at a high level without any star players are very long.

If you look at Harris' frosh/soph year, they had KT Harrel who was Top 50 and two other Top 100 players. Harris senior year, they had a Top 50 (Anderson was #35 on Rivals) and three other Top 100.

We don't have anything close to that.

Things will change dramatically with the new CBA.
 
Wisconsin has either made or would've made the NCAA tournament every year, but one since 1997; that's 24 years. During that span Wisky has played for the Natty and made the Sweet 16 8 times. Wisconsin rarely lands a top 100 recruit, and NEVER lands a top 20 recruit, even when they are from Wisconsin (Jalen Johnson, Tyler Herro, Diamond Stone, Pat Baldwin; Wisconsin even missed on the Hauser brothers). Recruit solid players, but not necessarily future lottery picks, run a sustainable program that develops talent, and retain your players for 3-4 years. Obviously, when the opportunity comes to land a generational talent; go for it, but you don't need to recruit top 20 players to win consistently. In fact, over the past 5 years that programs that have signed the lion's share of the one and done players have been spectacular failures: Duke and KY.
 
BTW, TX Tech had #31 and #43 on last year's team and have two more on this year's team.

At no point recently have I said we need one and dones. In fact, I've said they will soon be a thing of the past.

The fact there may be an exception like WI doesn't disprove the premise. Keep getting 100+ ranked players and we will continue to be bad.

P.S. This year's rankings and probably 22s are going to be outliers due to restrictions in play. A perfect example is shown on this thread. one of our targets is rated #117 by Rivals and in the 30s by ESPN. I think will happen a lot for 21/22 and maybe to a lesser extent 23.
 
RJKarl said:
If we don't get Top 50 guys, our top end is middle of the pack and that would be lucky.

As Skip used to say, "It's not the X and Os. It's the Jimmys and Joes."
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Without digging too far, and just looking at the current year, wouldn't Baylor's current #2 ranked team disprove this point, not to mention West Virginia, Loyola, Wisconsin, Rutgers, Creighton and probably 1 or 2 more?

2 guys 50-100 per year, complimented by 5 other guys in the 100-150 range will work just fine.
 
WestchesterDeac said:
Without digging too far, and just looking at the current year, wouldn't Baylor's current #2 ranked team disprove this point, not to mention West Virginia, Loyola, Wisconsin, Rutgers, Creighton and probably 1 or 2 more?

2 guys 50-100 per year, complimented by 5 other guys in the 100-150 range will work just fine.
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I didn't say PER YEAR...
 
Wisconsin isn't the only program that doesn't regularly recruit in the top 50; yet, consistently wins. Xavier from Skip Prosser to Sean Miller to Chis Mack has or would've made the NCAAs 16 times in 19 years (including 7 sweet 16s). Xavier isn't recruiting at the highest level; yet, their program has stayed at a high level, because their coaches recruit players who stay and develop. Same for Butler (11 tourneys in 14 years; Stevens and Chris Hotzmann); although WV has a different recruiting strategy, WV is not a destination school for a top 50 recruit; yet, Huggy has his team in the NCAA almost every year as did Beilein before him (WV NCAA bound 12 of the last 16 tourneys; 7 Sweet 16s and a Final 4). There are others (VCU, UVA, K State, OK, Gonzaga from 2000 to 2015).

Not saying talent isn't important, but there are multiple ways to win in college basketball. Naturally, every coach wants to recruit the best possible players, but there are many successful programs that don't dabble in the top 50 pool; yet find ways to win. Forbes is the kind of coach that can get the WF program to that level without top 50 players. Once WF gets to elite status, then it becomes easier to bring in top 50 players - see Nova and Gonzaga who didn't recruit the highest level players until recently, but found success anyway.
 
Xavier had plenty of talent. Many of those schools were the strongest in mid-level conferences. You can't do the same in a P6.

There are over 300 D1 bball programs and you are bringing up the exceptions not the rule. Of course you can find an occasional diamond in the rough, but the reality is you need to have some Top 50 players to win consistently in a P6 conference and especially the ACC.

As to Beilein, when he was successful at Michigan (from 2012 on -he was mediocre before then), he signed six Top 50 players in that period. To say he didn't have Top 50 is to not be aware of his record, but it sounds good.
 
RJKarl said:
The odds of you consistently competing at a high level without any star players are very long.
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Right. It's just odds. And nobody said "forever" - that's why I specifically called out UVA because they were successful on the backs of low-ranked guys, then leveraged that success to start getting highly ranked guys and they won a natty. But that's the point, higher ranked players, higher odds of being good. Lower ranked players, lower odds. Yet there are tons of exceptions, both in the long and short term. Systems matter, coaching matters. Getting good players that stay 4 years and become elite for the last 2 are hugely important. They're also much more realistic gets than some shit team landing elite recruits over UNC/Duke without cheating.

Manning was only ever going to be good by getting lucky finding NBA-quality 3 stars, or landing elite talent. Forbes isn't in that category. He doesn't need top 25 guys to win in the ACC, and win a lot. He needs more than a historical lack of talent because he's not a magician, and he needs some time to teach his system and get some maturity in that system. A year or two of a Jaylen Hoard type here and there is a meaningless addition to a shitty foundation.
 
Hell, look what the Deacs did with Chaundee(top-30), Hoard(top-30) and Sarr(top 100)...Not a damn thing
 
Granted, these are anecdotes.

I'd love to see what Forbes can do with a team filled with guys ranked 75-175
 
DCDeac said:
Right. It's just odds. And nobody said "forever" - that's why I specifically called out UVA because they were successful on the backs of low-ranked guys, then leveraged that success to start getting highly ranked guys and they won a natty. But that's the point, higher ranked players, higher odds of being good. Lower ranked players, lower odds. Yet there are tons of exceptions, both in the long and short term. Systems matter, coaching matters. Getting good players that stay 4 years and become elite for the last 2 are hugely important. They're also much more realistic gets than some shit team landing elite recruits over UNC/Duke without cheating.

Manning was only ever going to be good by getting lucky finding NBA-quality 3 stars, or landing elite talent. Forbes isn't in that category. He doesn't need top 25 guys to win in the ACC, and win a lot. He needs more than a historical lack of talent because he's not a magician, and he needs some time to teach his system and get some maturity in that system. A year or two of a Jaylen Hoard type here and there is a meaningless addition to a shitty foundation.
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Within a couple of years, I would guess a big majority of Top 25s aren't going to take a pit stop in college. Which actually will help us if we can start getting some Top 50s. Many of the #30-80 players are not at the basketball factory high schools. We need to get our feet in the door. We need to get a couple and develop the relationships.

As I showed, UVA had a Top 50 and multiple Top 100s on those teams. We don't even have that. We have to get there.
 
Rank em....

Culture, Coaching, Experience, Talent, Historical competitiveness
 
Resilient Deac said:
Granted, these are anecdotes.

I'd love to see what Forbes can do with a team filled with guys ranked 75-175
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I'd love to see what Forbes could have done with Chaundee and Sarr on this team.
 
RJKarl said:
Talent, coaching, experience -the other things are cute but who cares if a school was good twenty years ago.
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I threw historical competitiveness in there jokingly.

Many top ranked kids care about the "culture"...When I think of culture I think of reputation for putting guys in the league, media attention, homecourt advantage, etc...
 
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