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Pitino isn't recruiting out of high school



Basically, St. John's has become Marathon Oil (remember them?) with more practice time and better coaching.
The article I said the reason they aren’t doing that is because they have 4 freshman this year already they took to develop. 3 of the 5 starters this year were underclassmen last year. Makes sense though to replace 3 seniors you look to the portal because you’d much prefer experience than 17/18 year olds who haven’t played at the college level, especially when you have a sizeable freshman class this year.
 
Not Shaka. He has a very nice blueprint for a private school to be able to navigate through these uncertain times. The besides having enough NIL $, the key is having great relationships with the current players.
Yup. Honestly I think if Pitino were there for a few more years he'd be doing what Shaka is doing or closer to it. You can tell how much he values the culture piece of it for kids who buy into what he is trying to get them to do.

Uconn is doing something similar to Shaka IMO, but they went to the portal 2 years ago to get a missing piece (Spencer) and I think their goal was for Mahaney and Reed to being a similar type of plug and play starter situation (82 will know better). Of course when you can bring in freshman like Castle or McNeeley, that helps.
 
Not Shaka. He has a very nice blueprint for a private school to be able to navigate through these uncertain times. The besides having enough NIL $, the key is having great relationships with the current players.
Most every Coach.

Shaka is doing a great job keeping his players in a pre NIL kind of way. Must have a ton of NIL money and we know the school funds basketball very well. He is in a great spot for sustained success.
 
Appreciate what Shaka is doing at MU. But he loses Kam, Joplin and Mitchell this year after losing Kolek and Ighodoro last year. That’s a lot of top line talent that has to be replaced. Will be interesting to see if he can maintain the current level of success solely on HS recruiting plus development.
 
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Europe and JUCO are the next market inefficiencies to exploit in the ever-changing environment. It's how you 'get old and stay old' which has been the formula for quite a while.

With the 5th year exemption ending, how do you still get grown men 23-24 years old? You go to the European Pro Leagues and find guys with talent and experience that you can pay more to in college. They come over as 20-21 year old "Freshmen" with years of pro experience. Or go to the JUCOs where the years spent there no longer count to your 4 years of eligibility. Get an experienced 21-yr old who has 4 years eligibility.
 
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With rare exception, recruiting high school players in this era is a display of subhuman intelligence.
 
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Yup. Honestly I think if Pitino were there for a few more years he'd be doing what Shaka is doing or closer to it. You can tell how much he values the culture piece of it for kids who buy into what he is trying to get them to do.

Uconn is doing something similar to Shaka IMO, but they went to the portal 2 years ago to get a missing piece (Spencer) and I think their goal was for Mahaney and Reed to being a similar type of plug and play starter situation (82 will know better). Of course when you can bring in freshman like Castle or McNeeley, that helps.
The idea is to have consistency so that you can build culture. The model is to bring in high schoolers, but use the portal to fill needs. This year Singare wasn't ready to back up Johnson so they picked up Reed to be the #2 center. The knock in Michigan against the kid was that he had a low basketball IQ, but he has really come along and I think you can make the argument that he's our best center.

Similarly, Mahaney was supposed to be a lead guard who could score to share time with Diarra. He on the other hand has been pretty disappointing. Even trying to use him as a shooting guard off the bench has been problematic. I don't like to be too critical of players, but he is barely playable at this point. I don't think he fully understood the jump up in physicality and athleticism when you're playing high major basketball. Plus, the physicality in the big east is its own beast.

Next year we have three freshmen coming in and the hope is that they will be the new core that we will build around. Solo Ball, Stewart, and Ross will all be juniors So we should have good continuity. Hopefully Singare will be ready to play. That will give us Reed, Singare and 7 foot freshman Eric Reibe at the 5. 6'5" guards, Braylon Mullins and Darius Adams are both top 20 recruits so hopefully they can help us in the back court but I wouldn't be surprised if we went to the portal for an experienced point guard. 6'6" Australian Jacob Furphy round out the incoming class. He's listed as a guard, but I see him as more of a small forward.
 
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The idea is to have consistency so that you can build culture. The model is to bring in high schoolers, but use the portal to fill needs. This year Singare wasn't ready to back up Johnson so they picked up Reed to be the #2 center. The knock in Michigan against the kid was that he had a low basketball IQ, but he has really come along and I think you can make the argument that he's our best center.

Similarly, Mahaney was supposed to be a lead guard who could score to share time with Diarra. He on the other hand has been pretty disappointing. Even trying to use him as a shooting guard off the bench has been problematic. I don't like to be too critical of players, but he is barely playable at this point. I don't think he fully understood the jump up in physicality and athleticism when you're playing high major basketball. Plus, the physicality in the big east is its own beast.

Next year we have three freshmen coming in and the hope is that they will be the new core that we will build around. Solo Ball, Stewart, and Ross will all be juniors So we should have good continuity. Hopefully Singare will be ready to play. That will give us Reed, Singare and 7 foot freshman Eric Reibe at the 5. 6'5" guards, Braylon Mullins and Darius Adams are both top 20 recruits so hopefully they can help us in the back court but I wouldn't be surprised if we went to the portal for an experienced point guard. 6'6" Australian Jacob Furphy round out the incoming class. He's listed as a guard, but I see him as more of a small forward.
Mahaney surprised me too.I thought he'd be a valuable starter at PG/SG but he is physically overmatched.Back to St Marys for him next year.
 
The idea is to have consistency so that you can build culture. The model is to bring in high schoolers, but use the portal to fill needs. This year Singare wasn't ready to back up Johnson so they picked up Reed to be the #2 center. The knock in Michigan against the kid was that he had a low basketball IQ, but he has really come along and I think you can make the argument that he's our best center.

Similarly, Mahaney was supposed to be a lead guard who could score to share time with Diarra. He on the other hand has been pretty disappointing. Even trying to use him as a shooting guard off the bench has been problematic. I don't like to be too critical of players, but he is barely playable at this point. I don't think he fully understood the jump up in physicality and athleticism when you're playing high major basketball. Plus, the physicality in the big east is its own beast.

Next year we have three freshmen coming in and the hope is that they will be the new core that we will build around. Solo Ball, Stewart, and Ross will all be juniors So we should have good continuity. Hopefully Singare will be ready to play. That will give us Reed, Singare and 7 foot freshman Eric Reibe at the 5. 6'5" guards, Braylon Mullins and Darius Adams are both top 20 recruits so hopefully they can help us in the back court but I wouldn't be surprised if we went to the portal for an experienced point guard. 6'6" Australian Jacob Furphy round out the incoming class. He's listed as a guard, but I see him as more of a small forward.
Getting freshmen still works when you get 5-star and high 4-star freshmen, you have money to keep them, the time to develop them, and the veterans to play with them.

The top 2 freshmen Sha has brought in were Tae Davis & Isaiah Coleman. We couldn't keep Davis after his 1st year and is now averaging 15.5 points & 5.6 rebounds at Notre Dame. Coleman is also averaging 15.2 & 5.3 and will demand a lot in Free Agency next month.

These type of guys aren't good enough to make an impact for us their 1st year and we have trouble keeping them to take advantage of their development as they get older. We have to find our sweet spot in the Transfer/P4P era.
 
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Correct, but even if you have money it’s very difficult to retain a player beyond his sophomore year.

With the freshman model you’re taking an enormous risk paying a player an enormous amount of money with that is not ready to play at this level and/or nearly guaranteed to transfer out by the time they are truly value add players (jr year +).

If you have limited to no NIL resources for player retention there isn’t even a word in the dictionary to describe how foolish it is to recruit freshmen.
 
Getting freshmen still works when you get 5-star and high 4-star freshmen, you have money to keep them, the time to develop them, and the veterans to play with them.

The top 2 freshmen Sha has brought in were Tae Davis & Isaiah Coleman. We couldn't keep Davis after his 1st year and is now averaging 15.5 points & 5.6 rebounds at Notre Dame. Coleman is also averaging 15.2 & 5.3 and will demand a lot in Free Agency next month.

These type of guys aren't good enough to make an impact for us their 1st year and we have trouble keeping them to take advantage of their development as they get older. We have to find our sweet spot in the Transfer/P4P era.
College Basketball Reaction GIF by Marquette Athletics
 
If you have limited to no NIL resources for player retention there isn’t even a word in the dictionary to describe how foolish it is to recruit freshmen
Unless you are recruiting freshmen who don't command astronomical NIL. I think there's room to take kids who know that they need to develop and be able to keep them in the program. I agree, though, it's a brave new world and Seton Hall, like every other school is going to have to figure out what it niche is.
 
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