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Regarding your third point, he clearly stated those guys were the ones he would throw into that bin. Meaning those are the guys who were once considered locks that went elsewhere. No need in being a jerk while also being wrong.
Newnan had all sorts of rumors and issues after. Maybe we "missed" on him like we did Shabazz, Ayton, Xavier Henry, and all of those other guys who were trouble. Bol is a bad example. There was some weird stuff going on there after he was cut from the USA team. Bamba I will give you, but even then there's some rumors of him being involved with an agent.Comment
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The margin for error definitely shrinks without Zion but there's no reason Kentucky shouldn't be right there for a title next season. It would take a weird turn of events for them to just not be a player. Next year's team is going to be really exciting--and different for the Cal era.
Regarding "locks" and "leans"--none of us really knows whether a player was a lean or not without being inside the recruitment. But you could make a list of probably 50 players in the Cal era like crazzed did and make a case that something's wrong because we missed on those guys. That's a completely arbitrary exercise.
Mo Bomba is a great example. It looked like that was a horse race all the way through. Well, information came out later that Texas was in on that so tightly that nobody could have gotten him out of there.
These kids play the game. In some cases it's up in the air but in most cases the deal is done pretty early. We know this from their comments after the fact. I mean crazzed added Jaylen Brown of all people to that list. I've seen people say that Brown was so notoriously tight-lipped that some people around him thought he might not play in college. How would anybody tell one way or another that that guy was a lean anywhere?Comment
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And with regard to Brown, we weren’t in the conversation at all until the absolute last second, then all of a sudden he’s supposedly at prom and preparing to commit to UK. You’ll never make me believe we were seriously in on that kid.Comment
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We were a buzzer beater away from the Final Four last year, and you have no idea what the end of this year is going to bring.
It's not like we've fallen into some black hole of talentless crap. I think you need to go watch some game film of the end of the Tubby years, or even better, the Billy Clyde experiment. Then take a deep breath, come back here, and re-evaluate.
By "fine," I meant we'll be in the conversation for the title every year as long as Cal is here. And it's not like he's dumb; he knows he's missed out on a couple of these top five kids. He will adjust accordingly. And even if he doesn't, he'll still bring in second tier five star kids, and we've seen repeatedly how that format wins titles the same as the one-and-done model.Last edited by KCKUKFan; 01-05-2018, 04:27 AM.Comment
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Which is why I'll believe Zion Williamson goes to Clemson when I see it.
Remember when Julius Randle was going to Florida? Or Kevin Knox was staying in Carolina? Or Jamal Murray was a lock to Oregon? Or Nerlens Noel was a lock to Georgetown? After the fact they all made it clear that they were never going anywhere other than Kentucky. And that holds true for most of the guys Cal locked in on from an early date.
When Cal has been 100% zoned in on Zion as a priority for the majority of his recruitment, I see no reason to believe that he's just going to switch up to Clemson of all schools in the last month. Weirder things certainly have happened, and I'm not going to act as if Cal's recruiting hasn't gone from otherworldly to just really good in the past year or two, but if Zion Williamson ends up anywhere other than Kentucky, I'll be surprised.Comment
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If everyone returns that logically should, we could be really good. But returning players at UK under Cal sometimes defies logic.
Vanderbilt, SGA and Richards may well be his most important recruits for next year, imo.
But if Wiseman reclassifies and joins up, then all bets are off. Nobody would care where ZW went.Comment
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It looks like the philosophy isn't getting new freshmen phenoms every year all of a sudden.
If you don't have phenoms then you can't shuffle the roster. Cal is well aware of that. The trouble comes in when one of those guys who wasn't a phenom starts to turn into one. See Shai.
That's when you get holes blown in your program. If you know exactly who's leaving, it's easier to go into a living room and tell a kid they're going to come right in and fill in that spot. If very few are leaving things get sticky on the recruiting trail but they can get better on the actual court of play. See, again, North Carolina. They haven't gotten those phenoms and all they've done is compete for titles.Comment
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I was being a little tongue in cheek. I mean to say that the trouble comes when you get a player who nobody thinks is a one and done who suddenly may be a one and done. When the experts start raving about these kids that's bad, because the echo chambers starts. That's happening with Shai. That tends to happen when you're 6'6" and nobody can stop you off the drive.
One of the reasons it's difficult to pull in phenoms is that they know, and Cal knows, and everybody knows, that Kentucky's roster is dicey next year. It could look similar to this year. Really hard to run the system the way Cal has when they can turn on a television and in five minutes see that we have very few one-and-dones. Zion would likely have to fight here, and that could've been a deal-breaker.Comment
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Sam Vencenie tweeted day before yesterday that Shai could go as high as middle of the first round.Comment
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