I have to agree with the OP on this topic. Look at the team when Holdsclaw was here in 1996-97 I believe. That team lost 10 regular season games but won the national championship. Now, I'm not saying this team is going to do that because they're certainly not looking that way.
We certainly have enough talent to accomplish that though. We wasn't picked #4 in the pre-season for nothing. That 96-97 team also had Pat Summit as their head coach & not Holly Warlick although Warlick was a part of that coaching team.
This is certainly the worst record wise that Holly has placed on that floor in Knoxville but it's not the least talented either. It's also not the most talented but we do have plenty enough solid recruits with the addition of DeShields coming to Knoxville to do much better than we are right now.
I just think we have bad team chemistry or something that's messing up things. Maybe it's the offense Holly is using or maybe it's not. Sometimes we play solid defense & sometimes we don't. I understand why people are frustrated including me. Heck, just a few days ago I was all for Holly being fired but I think she deserves longer.
However, unless we start getting more of the top recruits then we're not going very far anyhow. Holly is not Pat Summit. She can't take 2 & 3 star recruits & make them play like 4-5 star recruits. We must get some 4-5 star recruits. Right now, for 2016 we don't have a single 4-5 star recruit on the radar:
2016 HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings - espnW 100 - ESPN
If it wasn't for Cooper & Jackson in the 2015 class we wouldn't have signed any 4-5 star recruits last year.
We have a girl out of Blackman High School(Crystal Dangerfield) right now that has already declared for UConn. She's the #3 recruit in the country. Chassity Carter out of Dickson County High School in Tennessee has already declared for Vandy & she's the #44 recruit.
The #83rd recruit(Rodrea Echols) out of Overton High School in Nashville has declared for Oklahoma State. We can't allow top state recruits to get away from us. That's starting to happen way too much since Pat left.
We must stop & ask how can that be for a UT Lady Vols program with such tradition? I don't know but this wouldn't even be a discussion with Pat at the helm. We would be deciding on which ones that we wanted instead of trying to find recruits to sign.
How much does these decisions from recruits have to do with Holly Warlick at the controls? Only the recruits with honesty can tell us that. There's a cause somewhere. Maybe it's a combination of things but we have to put a stop to not being able to get these top recruits especially the ones from the great state of Tennessee.
Just think about what I just stated from above about the 2016 recruiting. We have lost all 3 top rated Tennessee recruits to another school. They all 3 are 4-5 star recruits. You can't replace talent especially when you don't have Pat Summit coaching anymore.
