Tennessee Vols Basketball Recruiting

#11,226
#11,226
cncchris33 said:
We signed BJE (always were going to), and no one will ever convince me we'd have told Wallace, Mitchell, or Miller there was no room at the inn. So I absolutely believe we'd have signed 3-4. We knew, on some level, that we were losing Chandler, and that certain guys were expendable (Bailey, maybe Plavsic).

And whether that number was 3 or 4, we landed 0. That didn't set well with many people, and justifiably so. Anyone claiming they should be fired for not landing any of those top targets is being dramatic and ridiculous. Anyone who voiced a reasonable level of concern was being cautious and aware.
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You’re talking about creating narratives while portraying your position as “cautious and aware”. We had limited spots in the fall and swung for the fences on some of the absolute top prospects and didn’t get them, it happens. Then more roster spots opened up, we spread a wider net, and we’re filling spots relatively quickly.
 
#11,227
#11,227
VolOnthePlains said:
You’re talking about creating narratives while portraying your position as “cautious and aware”. We had limited spots in the fall and swung for the fences on some of the absolute top prospects and didn’t get them, it happens. Then more roster spots opened up, we spread a wider net, and we’re filling spots relatively quickly.
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I guess I don't understand what you're intending to say, here. I agree with your timeline of events. I just don't see why it seems unreasonable to some of you that anyone would be mildly concerned with how things went for nearly a year on the recruiting front. I'm fine with being outraged that anyone would call for the assistants to be canned at this point.
 
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#11,228
We were always going to take 3-4 if we could. Even in the fall. That narrative is a weird one. There will rarely be a year that we don’t at least take that many.
 
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#11,229
TheMookieMonster said:
I think this also is just a solid lesson for us all that with the transfer portal and high school products deciding later than ever now, we will need to be more patient moving forward. But, again, I still don't think it was wrong for people to be a little concerned until they had some actual results to point to.
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This. We are in a brave new world and applying former expectations for how the recruiting season should unfold is unrealistic as we have seen. Given CRB history recruiting here, he deserves the benefit of the doubt but it was very reasonable to question how well the new coaches would be able to recruit based the slow start.
 
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#11,230
#11,230
cncchris33 said:
I guess I don't understand what you're intending to say, here. I agree with your timeline of events. I just don't see why it seems unreasonable to some of you that anyone would be mildly concerned with how things went for nearly a year on the recruiting front. I'm fine with being outraged that anyone would call for the assistants to be canned at this point.
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This is no place for nuance. Of course someone can be skeptical and then later relieved/satisfied. I had a medium level of confidence that we’d get Phillips. That made it easier for me to go on the ride. We’ll know how well we did next March. Some super-teams are being made this year. We may very well have not done well enough. I’m pleased with the class, and am hopeful. I could easily be wrong. Recruiting is a very different thing going forward than it ever has been. I’m glad we have a coach who has a good combination of reputation and flexibility for a new landscape, and an AD who understands the chessboard too. Our assistants are going to have to fill the recruiting holes, but also fill the strategic void left by Schwartz leaving. I think it’s perfectly natural to be hopeful and/or skeptical. It’s a long road to building a great team. I like our experience and our young talent, but a high bar has been set by the acquisitions of players by other teams.
 
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#11,231
#11,231
cncchris33 said:
I guess I don't understand what you're intending to say, here. I agree with your timeline of events. I just don't see why it seems unreasonable to some of you that anyone would be mildly concerned with how things went for nearly a year on the recruiting front. I'm fine with being outraged that anyone would call for the assistants to be canned at this point.
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Too many years of die hard fans having their nuts kicked without being prepared for it. We have no middle ground for the majority of posters on this board and have lost the ability to see this objectively from -both- sides. We're either pie in the sky Barnes supporters, or nothing is good enough and he makes $5M + his assistants can't recruit.

Therefore, when some come around with a middle of the road conversation that should be quite easily discussed/debated it forces both sides to dig in to their extreme reactionary mindsets. This topic you all have been going back and forth on is a non-issue...but we turn it into 3-5 pages of discussion because we -feel- like it should be polarizing, so we treat is as such.

If we are honest with ourselves then it's obvious that both of these things can be and are true. 1. Criticism of the assistants recruiting up until recently is completely okay (perhaps not entirely fair, but worth a discussion topic). 2. They've done great to dissuade and eliminate that perception for the vast majority of fans who aren't 100% against Barnes because he hurt their feelings holding UT's foot the fire to renew their commitment to basketball by attempting to leave for UCLA.
 
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#11,232
#11,232
Stoerner Fumbles said:
This is no place for nuance. Of course someone can be skeptical and then later relieved/satisfied. I had a medium level of confidence that we’d get Phillips. That made it easier for me to go on the ride. We’ll know how well we did next March. Some super-teams are being made this year. We may very well have not done well enough. I’m pleased with the class, and am hopeful. I could easily be wrong. Recruiting is a very different thing going forward than it ever has been. I’m glad we have a coach who has a good combination of reputation and flexibility for a new landscape, and an AD who understands the chessboard too. Our assistants are going to have to fill the recruiting holes, but also fill the strategic void left by Schwartz leaving. I think it’s perfectly natural to be hopeful and/or skeptical. It’s a long road to building a great team. I like our experience and our young talent, but a high bar has been set by the acquisitions of players by other teams.
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This. Very well said. I am pleased with the class. I think it’s a nice mix of immediate impact players, and players who will develop and be a core piece in 2 years. But, overall, we’ve still not done as well relative to some of our competition who as you’ve said are “creating super teams.” We’re missing a PG ideally, and on the outside chance we land Hunter, then I’ll update my opinion of the class in real time again and I’ll be absolutely over the moon.

2023 does look like it’s shaping up extremely well. I think our high school recruiting looks like it’s not going to miss much of a beat with Gainey and Clark, but I do have small concerns about our portal recruiting. In this new era of college basketball, I think it’s going to be important to combine experience with youth each year, and we haven’t landed any big fish from the portal just yet. That can change and hopefully will change.
 
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#11,233
#11,233
cncchris33 said:
I guess I don't understand what you're intending to say, here. I agree with your timeline of events. I just don't see why it seems unreasonable to some of you that anyone would be mildly concerned with how things went for nearly a year on the recruiting front. I'm fine with being outraged that anyone would call for the assistants to be canned at this point.
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I’m saying some folks on here are trying to have it both ways. You want to moan and criticize before the fact and then bask in the reflected glory after. You may see that as just being a hardcore fan but it’s annoying.
 
#11,236
#11,236
Yeah, I'll be honest... Phillips may be the only incoming guy that legit has a shot to earn a starting role.

A handful of names (in the portal at least) I could see starting over ZZ. Be interesting to see who we end up landing though to push him to start at the point.

ZZ
Vescovi
JJJ
Phillips
ORN (may be Uros and ORN off bench to start until we see how he's playing after injury)

Plenty of minutes to be had here, but it'll be a challenge to start over any of those guys imo.
 
#11,237
#11,237
I am really bummed Yuri Collins didn’t work out. I would be cautiously optimistic that this years team could be better even than last year if we had just gotten him (or Hunter but don’t see that happening) along with the other gets. Still think we’re a top 25 team but with a hard ceiling
 
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#11,238
#11,238
Vol49er said:
I am really bummed Yuri Collins didn’t work out. I would be cautiously optimistic that this years team could be better even than last year if we had just gotten him (or Hunter but don’t see that happening) along with the other gets. Still think we’re a top 25 team but with a hard ceiling
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Agreed. Collins (or Hunter) was the missing piece. I am cautiously optimistic that next year can be a good one, but I'll need to see how ZZ adapts to being the full-time PG and what Edwards can bring first. Chandler's loss was a big one. He was fantastic and gave this team an edge.
 
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#11,239
#11,239
VolOnthePlains said:
I’m saying some folks on here are trying to have it both ways. You want to moan and criticize before the fact and then bask in the reflected glory after. You may see that as just being a hardcore fan but it’s annoying.
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I think that perspective is more aptly applied to the fan who has readied their torch and pitchfork over the first recruiting miss and returns to celebrate us landing the 5* kid as if they always had faith it would happen. I would agree that type of manic mindset is annoying.

But others seem equally as willing to apply that level of judgement to someone such as myself who waited almost a year and 10+ misses in one class to even float the suggestion that maybe our new assistants aren't the recruiters we thought they were when they were hired.

In other words, it seems as if they are equally attributing the same crazed level of emotion to both approaches. One hinges on wild mood swings while the other is based in at least a semblance of historical data points. Again, I didn't immediately call for their heads at their first recruiting miss. For that matter, I wasn't calling for their heads a month ago. And I'm certainly not, now.
 
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#11,240
#11,240
cncchris33 said:
I think that perspective is more aptly applied to the fan who has readied their torch and pitchfork over the first recruiting miss and returns to celebrate us landing the 5* kid as if they always had faith it would happen. I would agree that type of manic mindset is annoying.

But others seem equally as willing to apply that level of judgement to someone such as myself who waited almost a year and 10+ misses in one class to even float the suggestion that maybe our new assistants aren't the recruiters we thought they were when they were hired.

In other words, it seems as if they are equally attributing the same crazed level of emotion to both approaches. One hinges on wild mood swings while the other is based in at least a semblance of historical data points. Again, I didn't immediately call for their heads at their first recruiting miss. For that matter, I wasn't calling for their heads a month ago. And I'm certainly not, now.
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So your first bit of questioning for Clark/Gainey wasn’t until ~March/April of 2022?
 
#11,241
#11,241
Can't wait to go up against Kansas for Ramey if Hunter goes to Texas.

"Hunter is the obvious target currently, but I've heard Courtney Ramey is a guy they'd want if he opts out of going pro."
 
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#11,243
#11,243
jmva1 said:
Gainey and Clarke not doing better in recruiting than they have thus far has been surprising to me. They’ll have to step up even more with Schwartz gone and Polinsky probably not being much of a recruiter. Seems like in the same amount of time Gainey/Clarke has had, Kim English made great inroads with Chandler (and was making great ones in future classes too clearly with Justyn Fernandez)
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This was an exchange me and Chris had in April about this topic. I personally never saw anyone calling for their jobs. Just saying they hope and need Clark and Gainey to step up more than they had until that point. They clearly have in the past few months and I’m pumped they have.
 
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#11,245
bleedingTNorange said:
So your first bit of questioning for Clark/Gainey wasn’t until ~March/April of 2022?
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I probably made my first innocuous mention of it in the fall after the litany of misses we saw with our top targets. That same level of concern carried over to the spring where we continued to struggle until very recently, but it wasn't as though it escalated with each passing miss, nor did I run to my keyboard to gleefully call them out at every opportunity that presented itself like so many others do in an effort to simply "be right". This may surprise you, but I'm not actively rooting for them to suck at their job just so I can say I told you so.

Only recently (March-April of 2022) has it become a hotly debated topic, though, where I've felt the need to incessantly defend my opinion on the matter. So that is the time-frame I'm working off of. I'll leave it to you, Captain Literatim, to find any earlier passing mention of it in my post history, though, and hold my feet to the fire. I'm sure you've already filed away that research anxiously awaiting this response.
 
#11,246
#11,246
This whole conversation is dumb, to be honest. I don’t understand why it matters if someone had doubts at one point in time. Anyone here posting in the off-season which is mostly a dead period for this board isn’t one of the people you’d have to be concerned about calling for the staff’s heads if they struggled to recruit. So, we’re just looking to cast stones at people who aren’t even the ones reading these messages and won’t be back till the first loss of the season. Let’s just move on.
 
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#11,247
#11,247
cncchris33 said:
I probably made my first innocuous mention of it in the fall after the litany of misses we saw with our top targets. That same level of concern carried over to the spring where we continued to struggle until very recently, but it wasn't as though it escalated with each passing miss, nor did I run to my keyboard to gleefully call them out at every opportunity that presented itself like so many others do in an effort to simply "be right". This may surprise you, but I'm not actively rooting for them to suck at their job just so I can say I told you so.

Only recently (March-April of 2022) has it become a hotly debated topic, though, where I've felt the need to incessantly defend my opinion on the matter. So that is the time-frame I'm working off of. I'll leave it to you, Captain Literatim, to find any earlier passing mention of it in my post history, though, and hold my feet to the fire. I'm sure you've already filed away that research anxiously awaiting this response.
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Calm down, I was just asking…you mentioned you waited almost a year but I seemed to recall some questioning going on in the fall as you mentioned, which would’ve meant they’d only been on the job ~4 months or so, all I was saying.
 
#11,249
#11,249
Coaches get paid nicely to absorb fan criticism, and message boards are designed to air those criticisms. It's always puzzled me why some fans take any criticism of a coach (or assistants) as a personal attack. I like to like our coaches, but my fanhood belongs to Tennessee, not any specific coach. Coaches come and go, but my school is always Tennessee.

Our recruiting class has finally come together fairly well, but the continued omission of a portal PG is still a glaring need. The fact we've been pursuing the position speaks that the coaches agree. Right now, Phillips seems to be the only player that could impact this year's team. BJE might, but my personal opinion is he's not quite ready. Jefferson and Awaka are projects for the future.

I really hope Hunter surprises everyone and picks Tennessee.
 
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