I certainly don't undervalue the importance of having 3 star

I certainly don't undervalue the importance of having 3 star
by tdiddy07 (2023-06-02 09:53:41)

In reply to: The Irish might be pretty good by February 1st posted by Kayo

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bodies in the lineup. The program was gutted of players. So despite ND being historically a very attractive place compared to the other programs each of these kids was deciding between, I, too, recognize that it took hard work to get the kids to believe that despite barely any roster, Shrewsberry will return ND to regularly playing competitive basketball. So I'm happy to have 3 stars from 5 of the 7 acquisitions thus far (counting Njie as a 4 star from high school).

But I also don't want to misrepresent that this is an upgrade over recent recruiting. From the 2018 class to the 2022 class, Brey brought in one 5 star, six 4 stars, and 9 three stars. Including transfers, it'd be one more 4 star and two 3 stars. By memory, that's a pretty typical ratio over Brey's tenure. Of course, if you exclude the 2018 class that just left, it's one 5 star, 2 4 stars, and 8 three stars, which certainly looks a lot worse and is better reflects the short-term state of the program before the new hire.

All that is to say, I'm glad that our turnaround time to be a competitive team looks a lot better than it did in February. And there's a good argument that the ability to generate the present recruiting results can turn into regularly bringing in four-star and occasional five-star talent once we start fielding tournament teams regularly again. But it still is a question mark whether Shrewberry's recruiting results will exceed Brey's general recruiting results. What I am more confident in is that we won't be whiffing on entire classes and that we will be recruiting behind classes to fill in the gaps when inevitable transfers happen.

My biggest beef with Brey was big man recruiting.

Not so much that he didn't get any because we had some really good ones over the years. We even had a team that started four good players who listed at 6'8" or taller with Hansbrough at guard (Abromaitis, Martin, Scott, and Nash). We had Harangody, Kurz, Cooley, Auguste, Geben, and Mooney. There were plenty of of good bigs.

My problem was that Brey and his staff had several gaps when recruiting big men. Big man depth was a persistent issue, probably the #1 issue when it came to defense. Even the 2014 team that went 32-6 and damn near made the final four had to win games despite frequent double digit deficits on the boards.

I was willing to accept not getting top rated big men who had their eyes on the NBA and considered school a nuisance to that pursuit; but I believed that NF had to have at least three bigs every two classes to ensure that there were six in the program at all times. The underclassmen could develop while the upperclassmen logged the most playing time, and there would have been guys in the pipeline even if one or two of the three-star recruits didn't become major conference caliber players.

What I like best about Shrewsberry's roster is that it includes plenty of size. He added two 6'10" players and one 6'9" guy. Zona makes four guys who list at 6'9" or better. I'm willing to bet he will add at least two more in the next class.

It's about time that ND becomes the match-up problem for other teams instead of being the team with a size deficit.