Mike Porter
Postdoc
Posts: 3619
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Reg: 11-21-04
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05-11-23 01:08 PM - Post#356261
In response to SomeGuy
It’s the last part about recruiting that troubles me. The take seems to be: it’s not about you, it’s about the recruiting. But every one of those kids was told by those very same coaches some variation of you are the player we want. The players didn’t recruit the roster, but these are the kids that the coaches chose. I don’t think you can separate the two.
On the other stuff we all agree. The debate is always about how you get back to the top of the league. I don’t want to be mediocre any more than you do.
We've literally discussed recruiting on this board since as long as it has existed, in fact, since before it existed. We certainly talked about it with Glen Miller and Jerome Allen, but they had a slew of other problems beyond recruiting.
Yet for some reason, because Steve is a nice guy, you seem unable to address the elephant on the board (or in this case, apparently don't even want to hear about the elephant on the board from a trusted source?). I say this genuinely, I do think from outside looking in that Steve is a very good guy, great representative of Penn, etc. and I'll be damned if I didn't wish he was a good recruiter as well. That would be perfect situation for Penn, but unfortunately the results speak to the reality.
Ask anyone who has followed Penn Basketball Recruiting on the board what they think, the pattern has been clear throughout. The staff is excellent at identifying quality recruits early, but is generally terrible at closing the sale (and ultimately that is what recruiting is). It is extremely, extremely rare that they identify a top recruit early and get them to commit. In some of these years recruiting, they've not only had to go to plan B, but to plan C and beyond (or no recruit at all). This isn't me making it up, this is the reality anyone who follows can observe based on the timing of offers, commitments, and/or lack of commitments (especially when you look at position needs and very small classes).
This doesn't mean they haven't recruited some excellent players, they have, but not consistently and not with enough depth to have a single top 100 team in 7 seasons. I like the potential of the incoming class, but you have to string multiple quality classes together to be a championship, top 100 team.
Look back... this coaching staff has been unable to string together even back to back deep/quality classes. This is why our all time leading scorer AJ, had only one championship and a best 125 ranked team and why Dingle, who would have broken that record, had no championships and a best 126 ranked team.
I don't know what nychoops is going to say, I have some guesses, but even if what he says is different than what I think is happening, I want to hear it and I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
End of the day, what we know is that Penn basketball simply isn't good enough. That means recruiting, player development, and/or strategy/in-game coaching is subpar, right? Regardless, all of these are the responsibility of the coaching staff.
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