Originally Posted by
Billy Dat
It's clear that today's highly recruited player wants lots of PT right away, and will often transfer if it doesn't happen his first year.
It makes me wonder if Kentucky's current run is 100% predicated on all of Cal's best players leaving every year? Getting the best talent, although he claims to not promise PT, may be tied to immediate meaningful playing time. His magic touch seems 100% tied to finding the sweet spot between a huge advantage in talent and a huge disadvantage in experience. After recruiting, his master talent has been creating a system that seasons those raw recruits rapidly, almost like the drugs they shoot into preemies to rapidly mature their lungs. Would he be as effective a recruiter if he didn't generate 3-5 first round draft picks every year?
I say all of this because it really surprises me that more top 100 recruits don't go the "big fish small pond" route. Why battle for playing time at Duke when you could potentially be an instant headliner at Wichita State or Southern Illinois. Find that young coach on the fast track and basically decide that you and the coach are going to be one-and-done together...you'll get 25 shots a game and be an instant star as ESPN and their 20 college bball writers miss no one anymore, and your coach will show the next big boy school with an opening that he is a winner and a big time recruiter (Illinois comes to mind). I am not saying that's where it should go, it just surprises me that it hasn't gone that way.