Maybe I am misinterpreting you but I still don’t think 2-3 hits on the team at any one point in time will get us to the dance. If we do get 2-3 solid players each year and retain most if not all, then I agree. But we’ve found it very hard to both acquire and keep that much talent on the roster. Here’s hoping the recent success has put us on that path.
Scrimmage Thoughts.
- Thread starter ThatkidfromHolland
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Ooooo - there’s an idea. CCC can’t control admissions but maybe he could try to keep the players that already passed admissions 🤷♂️
Anyway, 2-3 stud players with complementary players should get you dancing, and if not, into nit. 2-3 studs among 10-15 frosh recruits plus transfers seems quite doable. That’s 2-3 across 5 Top 300 recruiting classes. Even ppd has to believe we should be able to convince 2-3 good players out of a pool of 1500. Should be able to correctly identify coachable, system consistent talent among 10-15 recruits from a pool of 1500.
Too many people think that a college coach's job is to stack up the highest-ranked 18-year-olds they can. IMHO, that mindset is what led to many of NU's problems early in CCC's tenure. A college coach's job is to assemble the collection of college-aged players that produces the best results for the university where they coach and that is a decidedly different proposition than the former idea. Because of the specific university where he coaches, I'm hoping that CCC has recognized that he needs to have a developmental program that sees potential, develops it, and blends it together in a system that maximizes the strengths of the types of players it recruits better than other teams. The recent trends away from a certain style of recruiting suggest he does.
NU has the unique advantage of being a top university academically in a top conference athletically, but that unique advantage doesn't work for the one (or two) and done set. NU has to be a team where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
I generally agree with this sentiment/approach. The part I don’t necessarily agree with is how much CCC changed his approach and how long it took him to realize this. CCC has had two gradual rises to the NCAA. Both took about 4-5 years - the first since he was hired in 2013 until 2017, and then the next until 2022. (Of course, the second one was more painful / recognizable to us coming off the success of the first rise). While I am sure he learned from mistakes, I don’t believe he significantly changed his approach. Getting a 4-star in Vic Law was the right thing to do. All others were 3-star or less. Recent recruiting classes’ offer lists are loaded with 4-stars. Most all are going to stay in school. Do we want him not to recruit those? I would venture not.
When I say "you only need 2-3 guys" I mean in a recruiting class. That allows for a couple guys who don't pan out. Obviously 4 is better than 2 or 3.
But that whole situation changed with the new transfer rules. One coach said he might stop recruiting high school seniors entirely. (Thats not crazy)
A team needs 8 quality players, maybe 9-10 for a little depth security and developmental purposes. Obviously you would want at least 3 of those guys to be "above average" or better.
Most NU teams probably have this at a minimum, but if those 2-3 guys are only barely above average (or aren't matured yet) and 4-8 are barely contributing, you get terrible years. When those two guys are mature Boo/Audige and the rest are Nicholson/Barnhizer/Beran/Berry, etc., you get a special year. Same with B-Mac/Law along with Pardon, Lindsey, etc.
If you contrast 2022-2023 to 2021-2022 (EDITED - I originally had the wrong years here) what are the main differences? Some would say Nance/Young, but really it was Boo and Audige becoming MUCH better and the rest of the team coming along for the ride, helped by their defense.
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1. High-major and mid-major colleges have adopted the "get old, stay old" philosophy that has served Wisconsin so well over the years because of the portal. It isn't just a matter of valuing experience. It's also about risk management. Coaches don't want to commit scholarships to players out of HS. They'd rather focus those resources on players with 1 to a max 3 years left.
2. Collins has an opportunity to find HS players with high ceilings with a developmental approach, because many of these players no longer are getting good committable offers. He will always have trouble with the top 50 to 75 because these guys all think they're going to the League in a couple of years, so why should they go to a school where they're expected to show up in class and do their homework? He's also fighting the tradition, NIL money, etc. at schools fighting for these players.
3. Forget everything you think you know about how college coaches evaluate players. It's crazy out there. My son' has a teammate who washed out of an NAIA program. Early this season he got a committable Big Ten offer after the head coach flew in and watched him practice for 10 minutes. Never asked his coaches about him, never even saw him play a game in person.
2. Collins has an opportunity to find HS players with high ceilings with a developmental approach, because many of these players no longer are getting good committable offers. He will always have trouble with the top 50 to 75 because these guys all think they're going to the League in a couple of years, so why should they go to a school where they're expected to show up in class and do their homework? He's also fighting the tradition, NIL money, etc. at schools fighting for these players.
3. Forget everything you think you know about how college coaches evaluate players. It's crazy out there. My son' has a teammate who washed out of an NAIA program. Early this season he got a committable Big Ten offer after the head coach flew in and watched him practice for 10 minutes. Never asked his coaches about him, never even saw him play a game in person.
I am convinced the team would NOT have succeeded last season if Nance and Young stuck around. Boo and Chase became much better because it became their team. They didn’t defer to the higher rated recruits. Not Pete’s team or RY’s or even Kopp’s. Barney, Berry and Big Matt had a role and fell in line with the pecking order. The same could happen this year with Barney moving into the number 2 role.
Those Nance/RY/ Kopp teams were brutal to watch. You could easily see how disjointed they were and CCC recognized this too late in the process if ever . The team deferred to Nance to game winning situations and shouldn’t have. RY was abused on defense and sulking Kopp was a cancer to chemistry from the start. So, the thought of having the right pieces fitting together over recruits stars is easier said than done but always the way to build a team. We will likely have some growing pains with so many new players this year, but there should be no confusion that we are a defense first team and a possession with the game on the line goes through Boo and Barney.
Interesting points. I can see tourney teams being almost entirely made of transfers. A player like Ryan Young isn’t getting recruited out of HS by Duke even if he is the exact same player he is today. However, Duke can fill a hole with RY to help their team while only burning 2 years tops on the scholarship.
There were many changes last year.
Offensively, Collins had to abandon the stretch 5 built around Nance. It wasn't pretty with Verhoeven as the starting center with Beran, Berry, Audige and Buie. When Nicholson proved that he should be starting, the ball screen became more prominent and Buie became much more effective at driving the lane and scoring. Buie averaged 19.1 points per game in Big Ten play and only 14.7 in the non-conference. As Buie asserted himself, Barnhizer eventually emerged as our 2nd best scorer and a more effective player than Beran.
Defensively, individuals improved (Buie bought in, Audige and Berry) but Nicholson was a big improvement over Nance and Verhoeven was arguably a little better than Young.
I would credit Buie first - he improved significantly on both ends of the floor. Then I'd credit Barnhizer and Nicholson. Then I'd credit the coaches for getting more out of their roster.
Audige and Berry improved defensively, but not so much offensively. Audige bounced back from a bad 2021-22 but didn't shoot as well as he did in 2020-21.
Did the team get better because Buie got better, or did Buie get better because the team got better (addition by subtraction, changing offensive/defensive philosophies, new players stepping up, etc.)? Kind of a chicken/egg thing. The points made above are valid - it's more than just Buie getting "better" (however you want to define it).
The saying we heard from one assistant coach is, "Potential gets you fired."
