These are precisely where the expectations should be. Arguing that things are okay because a coach is doing marginally better in wins than the guys before him who failed is an asinine argument. Depth is the coach's responsibility. If losing a starter to injury devastates your season, you've failed in recruiting. The simple fact is that the current regime, like the previous ones, have continued to bring in a lot of players who aren't Big Ten material and one of the best pieces of evidence is where these players transfer once this is apparent. There aren't any NU players leaving to join North Carolina or Virginia or Villanova to contend for the NC. And the bottom line is that if recruiting really has taken a quantum leap, the program would not be where it is right now. Full stop.
Now that the dust has settled from incorrectly attacking cometclear as an Illini fan, I want to acknowledge this post. Cometclear's points merit some discussion.
Despite repeated claims of night-and-day differences in recruiting, we have not been seeing it in the results on the court. Indeed, we continue to have 3-5 Big Ten level players--with the very, very best of them topping out at 2nd/3rd Team All-Big Ten. Beyond that, there is very little competitive depth. Instead of having past "depth" that consisted of a mixture of walk-ons and European recruits who didn't have much business being on a Big Ten team, we currently and recently have had a mixture of walk-ons, unused scholarships, a 5th year senior who last played competitive basketball in high school and so on. In essence, nothing has changed.
Further, the Collins-recruited "stars" (McIntosh/Law/Pardon/Lindsey/Gaines) have been more or less on par with the Carmody-recruited "stars" (Shurna/Juice/Moore/Crawford/Coble). They are European Pro-level guys, but not NBA-level talents.
Of course, I am still holding out hope for Nance, Beran, Jones and Kopp...but there's not much beyond that. And it's the same problem of having 3-5 quality players plus some Big Ten bench also-rans and a few complete duds. I hate to disparage our hard-working and well-meaning players (past and present), but we can all acknowledge that the majority of NU's team has always been made up of guys who are not serious high-major players. Unfortunately, this has not changed under Collins...even with the magical NCAA Tournament run, a new arena, a long-term coaching contract and a doubled recruiting budget.
As cometclear points out, it is quite telling that our former so-called stud recruits have transferred to play in the Patriot League, Missouri Valley and Metro Atlantic Athletic Conferences.
However, I might argue that we do no actually need future NBA stars to be a solid college team. (Of course, it would help.) I believe that if Collins can fill the majority of the roster with guys that live up to that ceiling of 2nd/3rd team All Big Ten level potential, we would have something special. Iowa and Wisconsin have had some really good teams like this. Unfortunately, Carmody was never able to get enough good guys at once. So far, neither has Collins...except for the one Tournament season with a strong combination of solid (not great) Collins and Carmody recruits coupled with some good fortune regarding health.
But maybe this one successful season should be the model for building initial success. This has sort of been Fitzgerald's blueprint for building success. The one thing that we cannot continue to have is unused scholarships and transfers every season. If you are going to build a team with 3-star and marginal 4-star talents, we need to develop the players and win with a system that wins. Again, this has been the Iowa and Wisconsin path to success...and probably one NU should look to model. It's clear that NU will never succeed trying to duplicate Duke's approach.
