I think the "dawg" thing gets overrated. Plenty of really talented players are hard-nosed competitors who give 1000% all the time. Likewise, plenty of kids with "egos" play their tails off and are easy to coach. Most every D-I prospect has an ego because they've been the best player pre-college almost everywhere they've been. Plenty of successful coaches have had no trouble getting talented kids to play hard, team-first basketball.
Dre Davis was a 4-star recruit, top 100-150 type coming out of prep, who committed to Louisville. Sure, he competed hard and played the undersized 4 well for us on a team where we had a hybrid PG who rebounded like a forward and whose game was living in the paint, which help offset some of the size issues. I don't think he fit a particular "mold" per se of some underrecruited, undervalued type.
Bediako did fit that mold and outperformed my expectations by a lot, but that was a grad transfer senior and seems more like an outlier the staff did a good job of evaluating and then maximizing on what he does well.
I still believe in Sha's ability to coach kids up and his old school philosophy, IMO, isn't a complete deterrent because plenty of super successful coaches still do that. Look how hard Tom Izzo is on his kids? Or Pitino? Or Hurley? But I think most every coach in the Big East and other high majors has the ability to "coach up players", so to me the "fool's gold" is thinking Sha is the only one who can do this or even that he can do this better than many other coaches who have been more successful than him (not saying you are implying this, nor do I think Sha is that naive).
Jury is out on this coming season. I'm not going to be overly negative from the jump, and like usual will wait until we get into the Big East schedule a decent amount to form my opinions.
