This is, IMO, true. I don’t think we can appreciate how the vast majority of these kids’ identities are tied into being a basketball player. How everything else pales in comparison.
My wife has a cousin whose wife told me she sometimes finds him in his car listening to tapes of the radio broadcasts of his high school games: “Chadwick for threeeeeee”. Dude never even played college at any level. He’s pushing 50.
But, regardless, we’ve brought in good raw material (kudos to CC for proving that’s possible). I think that’s where you and I truly disagree. I see talent that has been seriously mishandled. You see talent as a problem. It’s never going to be easy, we won’t magically turn into a landing spot for 5* kids. But we can attract decent talent.
This "mishandled talent" concept resonates with me. I was completely on board with Collins after the tournament team, but the next season exposed him. He got off to a good start with his first recruiting class and rode that (and two Carmody guys) as far as that would take him. Then it disintegrated when Lumpkin and Taphorn graduated.
Watching this season's games as we lost 13 straight, I kept asking "Why is he playing Beran?" "Why is he playing that same 5 guys so much?" "Why isn't Young playing more?" "Why won't he put Young and Nance together?" "Can you try Greer at the point with the two bigs?" "Why is Young running around 25 feet from the basket?" "Why won't you play Nicholson?" "Why do you have Young out there with 4 guards?" "Why are you subbing constantly?" and "Can you have McIntosh work with Buie?"
It wasn't until late in the season that I got the box scores that enabled me to look at how the various lineups performed. Some facts...
1) the lineup that Collins used the most performed way below the team's standard level.
2) Beran with Nance was very bad, but 70% of Beran's minutes were with Nance !!!
3) Young and Berry both improved the play of all their teammates, except with Gaines.
4) Young and Gaines played poorly together, but 60% of Young's minutes were with Gaines !!!
5) Young / Kopp / Beran / Audige/ Buie was strong, but played less than 2 minutes per game.
6) We outscored our Big Ten opponents when Young and Nance were paired up.
7) We outscored our Big Ten opponents when Gaines and Nance were paired up, without Beran.
8) Greer was generally a negative except when paired with Nance and Young (about 1 mpg).
For those who understand statistics, I did a regression of the performance of the 5 man lineups versus the time Collins played them. (How well the team did with each 5 man group, compared to the amount of playing time that group got)
The correlation was zero. Put another way, in general, the lineups that had success got no more playing time. The lineups that were unsuccessful got no less playing time. Playing time was random vs performance.
The season would have been much better if Collins had just used
Nance/Kopp/Buie/Audige/Gaines
and
Young/Kopp/Buie/Audige/Beran
instead of the disastrous "starting lineup"
Nance/Kopp/Buie/Audige/Beran
and more Young/ Nance / anybody
and Ty Berry off the bench