Old Bison
Masters Student
Posts: 619
Age: 65
Reg: 07-09-17
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01-19-20 06:17 PM - Post#297099
In response to HuskyColonial
HC, not an unreasonable question. I don’t have a good answer (nor do I have any internal feedback) for you. Without the kid deciding to make some revolutionary changes in lifestyle and work ethic it doesn’t appear the program will get a high ROI.
After the 4-5 star level recruiting is a very funny thing. Bucknell has enjoyed extraordinary success in this regard. How much is attributable to prescience and judgement vs good luck is hard to assess. Kids that became tremendous players here were not highly recruited by others and it’s either a curious Malcolm Gladwell event or a phenomenal job at assessment. Kids like Lee, Badmus, Bettencourt, Muscala, Willman, Haas, Fouland, Brown, et. al. are extraordinarily hard to find and project. It’s a little bit science (kids from successful HS programs and select known competitive leagues) and a little bit art (kids like above who may be outside that profile). It’s not easy when your higher charted offers don’t matriculate.
I will offer that I said very early in the year that I thought Spear was a “wasted scholarship†as a freshman and thought he was the most improved kid in the program from freshman to sophomore year. I had the same early feeling with respect to Meeks and clearly Ellis who’s a total enigma to me but seems to have gained a little more confidence as of late. A kid like Rhodes has the energy and the body that you like with skills you need to be able to project. Will those skills eventually evolve you can only hope. If it were easy everyone would be successful and that’s not the case.
ND is running the program and needs our confidence and support and likewise with respect to the kids. I liked our effort at AU and I just have to throw out last night as a case of playing down.
Very different equation tomorrow night with little to no assurances that we will perform well. Why you have to play the games😃.
One game at a time and we see how we go. PL is proving a lot more palatable than OOC.
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