mustangxc wrote:Jason B, there is no reason to allocate scholarship spots for lower level athletes. I think the recruiting philosophy should be to allocate by class year/eligibility. Take X amount of HS prospects and X amount of transfers that are sitting out and X amount of Graduate transfers/jucos that can play immediately. I would much rather take a 4 or 5 star that has to sit out a year than a DITR recruit that will almost always not contribute at all for at least a year. If you are comparing an Everett Ray HS to Everett Ray transfer, then of course you take him out of HS because there is more upside potential the younger they are. However, we should not plan to take those types of kids simply to fill out our roster. The only reason you take lower level prospects is because you think there has been a misevaluation and see that DITR as a potential star or because you messed up and it is a position of dire need. BTW Chargois is not a DITR, he is actually one of our higher rated recruits under Jankovich, which is the biggest problem.
Chargios should be viewed as a DITR. In college, anyone who isn't a 4 star or a 3 star with multiple high tier offers is a DITR. Chargois may have been a solid 3 star. but he doesn't fit the upper level recruit category. That is why he falls in that DITR bucket.
Look realistically at being a high-level program in the AAC. The super high level 5-star isn't coming here out of HS, because they all think they are 1 and done at the upper tier college. Now, if any of those guys want to transfer in, regardless of numbers, you let them in. Period. No argument there. That is the Semi's of the world. But none of the current batch of inquiries are on that level.
Next up is the high-end 3 star player or the 4 star player. These are your Brown, Moore, Shake, Whitt, Foster, Hunt players. More often than not, those players aren't going to be all-conference their freshman year. But they are absolutely expected to contribute immediately, most likely off the bench. The reality of the situation is that those guys come to SMU expecting to play. Maybe they are behind an experienced player year one. But they expect to play year 2, 3, and 4. As a transfer, they expect to sit out for transfer rules and then play immediately. Because of that reality, you aren't going to get a full roster stacked with high end 3 and 4 star players on a 13 player roster. It just isn't going to happen. Period. You get a minimum of one of these guys out of high school every year, hopefully a second guy out of high school at this level every year, and then you have one transfer at this level every year. Someone leaves to the NBA early, or someone transfers, and you have 8 of these guys on your roster at all times. Right now, we have Foster, Hunt, Whitt, ,McMurray, Mike at this level. Mike and McMurray are on the list because they were both highly regarded as transfers because of their Frosh performance even though they weren't huge coming out of HS. We are three players short, and those players are Froling, Douglas, and Sed. Sure, you are going to have casualties, but when you are short scholarships, you absolutely can't afford to miss because there is no room to play catchup. This is the area that you can blame Jank on quite fairly. In fact, I think you can also place some blame on him for not convincing Semi and Shake to stay another year and improve their draft position. Those are all fair points to make.
But expecting the entire roster to be full of high end three and four star players is a joke. That isn't fair, because it is never going to happen. What do you think "Jank wasn't interested" means? Do you really think Jank said "No, we loved you coming out of high school, but we don't want you at all now, because I want more DITR"? Or do you think Jank pulled a Chad Morris and said "You rejected us the first time, we don't give players a second chance" OR do you think it is a hell of a lot more likely that the recruit said "Hey, I am interested to come to SMU but I want to start. Can you guarantee me a starting position?" And Jank said, "Hey, would love to have you, but I can't make that guarantee because we already have Mike, Hunt, and Chargois. You would have to come in and fight for a starting spot." And then the recruit's family goes and tells people that Jank doesn't want them.
I'm guessing that the bit at the end is in reality what is going on. These players want a guarantee to start. And if they were a guard, they would have that guarantee. Even if they were a strong shooting wing, they would have that guarantee. Other than that, they are pretty much in the same spot here as they would be at UT or TCU, fighting for a spot. And they aren't going to be interested in coming to SMU, as much as I love our school and program.
Judge Jank on the stuff that matters - our record/performance/style of play, Losing Semi and Shake early to the draft, missing on Froling and Douglas and chasing off Sed, not having another stud guard in the upcoming recruiting class. The other crap is just a bunch of hearsay and doesn't matter.
As a side point on style of play - I loved watching LB and the fundamentals. But please realize that not shooting threes and the slow pace of play both raised our floor and lowered our ceiling. I think our offense looks ugly at times when we don't run sets in the half court, but we have other problems outside of how many threes we shoot. Like not having a true big, which again comes back to the Froling miss.