PennFan10
Postdoc
Posts: 3585
Reg: 02-15-15
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02-17-21 12:33 PM - Post#320878
In response to SomeGuy
Jeff's "point" about momentum is a myth, it doesn't exist. He conjures up selective data and then generalizes that "more often than not" blah blah blah.
It's his opinion only. Believe it at your own peril. Texas has churned football coaches because they believe in the Mike James theory they are just a good coach away. It's a myth. But it's also a style difference. Tortoise and the Hare. I believe Donahue has the chops on all fronts to figure it out and I believe it also has to be in conjunction with the institution. Amaker brought his name to Harvard at the perfect time as the stars aligned. James Jones was a nobody and had to work with the school for 15 years to become relevant. Mike Martin is widely considered a talented coach and recruiter despite never making the ILT and getting beat by Penn every year in his attempts to do it.
Momentum and "1 coach away" theories are nice stories but not rooted in facts.
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mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-17-21 12:35 PM - Post#320879
In response to AsiaSunset
Besides it’s not like Yale and Princeton have been better the last couple years because they have won head to head recruiting battles with Penn.
Now we may disagree with the approach (recruiting in 2-3 hour drive from Philly) which leads them to ignore some of the AAU talent that otherwise might be inclined, but the idea they aren't in contact is simply not true.
I think these comments are much closer to the point. I do think Penn has a real problem outcompeting certain other Ivies head-to-head, but that isn't as much of a problem anymore because the pool has expanded so greatly.
Think of the most recent star recruits. The 2016 Harvard class was one Northeastern kid (Aiken) and 1 from OH, 1 from CO, 2 from GA and 2 from CA. The 2020 and 2021 classes were 3 from the Northeast (Pitcher, Silverstein and Hemmings), 2 from AZ, 2 from the midwest and 1 from NC. Princeton's best recent recruit was from Canada (as were many other good Ivy recruits recently), and it has picked up a bunch of other good ones from the West Coast. Yale has really run up the score in FL, GA and SC, just grabbed a really good one from the Midwest (where the Ivies recruit well) while still holding serve when it wants to in the NEPSAC.
While Harvard, Yale and Princeton all generally win over Penn when going heads up for recruit, the important point is that their recruiting doesn't really bring them up against Penn all that much. That's how the second quote explains the first. The Ivy League pecking order just doesn't matter as much as it used to because of the expanded pool of winnable prospects, but if your team isn't able to expand its own pool with wins and isn't doing all that well in the shared pool, recruiting will suffer. If Penn could just win the kids that it's going up against mainly non-Ivies for (like Harvard, Yale and Princeton have gotten good at), whether it can or can't beat those other schools for kids wouldn't matter as much.
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32835
Reg: 11-21-04
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New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 12:42 PM - Post#320880
In response to mrjames
Perhaps, but I think Penn has had only one stinker recruiting year under Donahue....what would have been this year's seniors. It's tough to lose your top recruit to injury in 3 recruiting years.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6413
Reg: 11-22-04
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02-17-21 01:27 PM - Post#320882
In response to palestra38
My only concern here is that Charles may not be what you are expecting. It sounded like he had the best chance of being a starter among the freshmen last year before he got hurt. But I believe he is mainly a 3 point shooter. By senior year of high school 2/3 of his made shots were 3s. And that was high school. My guess is that doesn’t change as a college player, particularly playing for us.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6413
Reg: 11-22-04
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02-17-21 01:32 PM - Post#320883
In response to mrjames
But Penn’s geographic spread of recruits isn’t any different from Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. We’re drawing kids from lots of different places, just like they are.
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32835
Reg: 11-21-04
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02-17-21 01:43 PM - Post#320884
In response to SomeGuy
Well, of course we don't know. I would hope he improves his overall game. But losing Jelani, Wang and Charles, with only one of them playing a partial season, makes it really hard to conclude that Steve isn't recruiting well. I mean, Penn was 10-2 the year AFTER they won the title, having just beaten New Mexico in the Pit, when Wang went down in the Toledo game and that team, then lost to Monmouth and 2 against Princeton before recovering and beating Villanova! That team lost 4 OT games that year and if we had Wang for any of them playing the way he was playing, we might have won all of them and the narrative would be completely different.
But it isn't recruiting.
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PennFan10
Postdoc
Posts: 3585
Reg: 02-15-15
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02-17-21 01:53 PM - Post#320885
In response to palestra38
My concern, if I were honest, is that Steve is prioritizing the Big 5 and the Philly connection, staying close to home and trying to win recruiting battles there. Having said that we lost recruits to Temple and other Big 5 schools. We have to be able to win the Philly kids over other Big 5's. If there is a red flag for me, over time that would be it.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6413
Reg: 11-22-04
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02-17-21 02:26 PM - Post#320886
In response to palestra38
Yes, I was just reacting to the “running†thing. I don’t think Charles is really in that mold. He could be our best recruit in last year’s class. I just don’t think he’ll be an Ira Or Ibby stealing balls and going coast to coast.
But I agree with you about our recruiting overall. We’ve had the best freshmen in the league by win shares the last two seasons. Again, if this is getting lapped, keep lapping us.
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mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 03:41 PM - Post#320887
In response to palestra38
We’ve had the best freshmen in the league by win shares the last two seasons. Again, if this is getting lapped, keep lapping us.
Win shares are a function of playing time. Penn hasn't recruited deep, talented classes, so it keeps needing to press its freshmen into service, and thus they can rack up win shares. I'd imagine they'll continue to have strong showings in freshmen win shares, because they don't have enough returning talent to keep the best freshmen on the bench. Yale keeps winning the league, and it has only had 3 freshmen get more than 0.5 win shares over the past three seasons (Atkinson, Swain, Mahoney).
The biggest indictment of Penn's talent over the past four years is the following:
AJ finished with the fifth highest win shares (it's okay to use win shares when you're talking about retrospective productivity rather than using them to project moving forward!) in the past 20 years.
Usually when a team has one of those players, they do great things:
1) Ryan Wittman (19.6) - Three Ivy titles, Sweet 16
2) Ibby Jaaber (18.3) - Three Ivy titles, four 10+ Ivy win seasons
3) Wes Saunders (17.3) - Four Ivy titles, two NCAA wins, two Top 25 teams
4) Ian Hummer (17.3) - One Ivy title (lost out to two different teams that won NCAA games and came within a bucket of an NCAA win as a 13-seed in 2011), 43 Ivy wins
5) AJ Brodeur (16.7) - One Ivy title (16-seed), didn't come closer than 3 games back any other year
6) Justin Sears (16.7) - Two Ivy titles, one NCAA win, 42 total Ivy wins
The remainder of the Top 20 in win shares mostly includes players who were part of those types of teams with only a few more that weren't (Lo, Morgan, Rosen and Rosenberg).
The past four years of AJ's tenure should be seen as a significant underachievement by the team relative to the teams of the other players who have posted similar lofty output. Meanwhile, Harvard won two Ivy titles and 42 Ivy games with it's highest win share player being Chris Lewis (26th, 12.6) and Yale won two Ivy titles and 39 Ivy games with its highest win share player being Paul Atkinson (30th, 12.0).
The reason has everything to do with recruiting and, consequently, depth. Harvard would have hoped that its top win share players would have been its POYs (Towns and Aiken) and Yale would have hoped it would have been Oni or Bruner. And yet both still won titles even though none of those players got to 10 win shares. Where would Penn have been without AJ for vast stretches? If they lost two win shares a year from his productivity?
These are the questions that an analysis of their recruiting ability would examine. Without AJ performing at a god-like level for four years, we'd be having an entirely different discussion, and you can't say the same thing about the teams that are recruiting better than Penn.
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32835
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 04:10 PM - Post#320888
In response to mrjames
While I know you were responding to SomeGuy and not me (I said nothing about win shares), I think it's just wrong not to look at those injuries and recognize that is far more of a factor than recruiting. In '18-'19, Jelani Williams, a top recruit the year before, goes down before the first game with a second ACL. Ryan Betley, one of the favorites for POY, goes down 5 minutes into the first game, Penn loses Wang, who was tremendous, when they were 10-2, Washington suffers an injury which affects him for the rest of the year and they still win the Big 5 and beat Villanova, but simply don't have enough in the tank to win in the 14 game round robin or in the playoff. The next year they lose Charles as well as Williams again and Wang can't play. They still made the playoffs both years. But had Penn had it's top recruits available, they would have been right in the mix with Harvard and Yale.
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mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 04:29 PM - Post#320890
In response to palestra38
First of all, none of those players are comparable to losing a year of Towns, Aiken, Oni, Bruner or Mason. Second of all, you're making my point. If Penn was entirely healthy, it would be right there with a Harvard team that was on its fifth point guard at one point and a Yale team that lost Mason, Mason and Bruner and then Oni three out of the past four season.
That's fundamentally my point. Penn is recruiting well enough that if everything goes perfect, it could be right there with Harvard and Yale so long as they're both hobbled with injuries. If Harvard hadn't had any injuries, many folks had it tabbed as a Top 25, second-weekend team. But it got decimated. And then you got to see what quality recruiting looks like.
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32835
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 04:42 PM - Post#320891
In response to mrjames
Harvard indeed with Towns and Aiken should have won a title. But they had one of them and still didn't each of the last 2 years. Meanwhile, Penn lost more than one guy. I agree that Harvard lost stars each of the last 2 years. Penn lost it's best scorer the year after it won the title and he was a shell of himself his final year, plus its 3 best recruits over those 3 years. I don't think anyone lost nearly as much as Penn. And they still made the playoffs every year. Let me say it this way--if Betley and Wang don't go down in '19, Penn wins back to back. And they have recruited very well the last 2 years.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6413
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 05:31 PM - Post#320892
In response to mrjames
Hang on — you’re either misrepsenting or misunderstanding my point here. I have never said that Penn is recruiting as well as Harvard. I don’t believe Penn is. My point is that Penn can beat Harvard while getting outrecruited. Recruiting is a part of that, but it isn’t everything— if it was, Harvard would win every year. Or at least one of the last six years.
I disagree with the “recruiting problem†part of your narrative. If your narrative is just that Harvard outrecruits us, then we are all agreed.
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palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32835
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 05:40 PM - Post#320893
In response to SomeGuy
Double agreed. But there's no way to out-recruit Harvard because Harvard is offering the max that Harvard can offer--a free Harvard degree with a big money coach with connections. Since we can no longer offer 50 years of great basketball as we once did, there is no advantage we can declare in a head to head.
That being said, we've held our own against Harvard head to head.
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mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 06:19 PM - Post#320895
In response to SomeGuy
I don't think anyone lost nearly as much as Penn.
That's insane.
And they still made the playoffs every year.
Barely.
if it was, Harvard would win every year. Or at least one of the last six years.
Harvard has won three of the past six Ivy titles. It lost two road tourney games as the 1-seed.
My point is that Penn can beat Harvard while getting outrecruited.
Penn is 4-6 against Harvard under Donahue (5-7 with tourneys) and hasn't beaten Harvard away from The Palestra.
If your narrative is just that Harvard outrecruits us, then we are all agreed.
My narrative is that Penn is recruiting like the fourth or fifth best team in the league (Brown is right there with Penn) and over the past four years it has the fourth most Ivy wins. Further, I believe those two things are linked. I also believe that Harvard and Yale are recruiting much better than Penn and are 1-2 in Ivy wins over the past four years.
This notion that Penn can get outrecruited by Harvard, Yale (and Princeton) and still "compete" isn't being proven true in the Ivy standings, where it is -3 to Princeton, -6 to Yale and -9 to Harvard over the past four years.
What's more is that Penn had BY FAR the most productive player in terms of total output over those four years, masking how much further the Quakers are behind in average talent.
You can spin things all you want, but I'd recommend listening to nychoops and me and the info we're trying to convey, rather than pretending we're just shooting from the hip on a barstool. We're just trying to share what we know.
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91Quake
PhD Student
Posts: 1126
Reg: 11-22-04
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02-17-21 06:47 PM - Post#320896
In response to SomeGuy
I don't think you are right on Charles. Take a look and listen to what's available out there on the interwebs. He was a shooter when they needed one in his high schoool, but I expect him to be a good defender and better all around player than you are expecting. I think he was being looked at for a real role as a freshman because he was not just a shooter but a more complete player.
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besnoah
Masters Student
Posts: 803
Reg: 12-14-05
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02-17-21 07:00 PM - Post#320897
In response to 91Quake
I have made it clear that I agree with mrjames on the recruiting issue, but the contrast between the way he has--for years--venerated James Jones for "managing to always finish top 4" (I'm sure there were never any close calls) with the way he discusses Penn's current situation is frankly very funny.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6413
Reg: 11-22-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 07:01 PM - Post#320898
In response to mrjames
i don’t think you’re shooting from the hip. I think you’re essentially a paid Harvard shill.
Are you really carting out a record of 5-7 to show Penn can’t beat Harvard? Doesn’t that prove my point? Meanwhile, you say that Penn is basically even withBrown, a team that we are 5-1 against over the last 3 years and 7-3 against during Donahue’s tenure. A team that has never finished ahead of us in the standings. A team that hasn’t been in the same zip code in Pomeroy.
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SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6413
Reg: 11-22-04
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02-17-21 07:05 PM - Post#320899
In response to 91Quake
Not saying he can’t defend, or isn’t a well rounded player. I just think that the comment about running may be missing what his strengths are.
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mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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Re: New 2021 Recruiting Thread
02-17-21 07:05 PM - Post#320900
In response to SomeGuy
I think you’re essentially a paid Harvard shill.
Yeah, I'm gonna take a break from this place for a bit.
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