“Calhoun’s Recruits” | The Boneyard

“Calhoun’s Recruits”

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Ronobro

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Nobody needs my idiotic take but, like the rest of you, I still can’t get over it.

I’ve read quite a few posts lamenting that our expectations were too high for this group of players; 4/5 starters were mid-major level recruits and they simply had hard ceilings. All season long, though, I’ve been wondering what a Calhoun could have done with this group of kids. I honestly think he’d have won that last game by 20.

Remember that game in 2008 when UConn suspended Dyson/Wiggins and Calhoun took the severely depleted roster on the road to #8 Indiana and somehow got the W? Of course it’s not fair to compare anyone to Calhoun, but eking out wins like that are a large part of what makes a great coach.

I’m absolutely not defending Ollie, but anytime someone mention’s 2014, the most popular criticism is that he won it all with Calhoun’s recruits.

So my moronic unanswerable question is: Would Hurley have won with that 2014 roster? I really don’t think so. Dude probably would have started Brimah, Nolan and Olander together. (Joking, but you get my point)

I refuse to believe that this season was the best a strategic/reflective coach could have gotten out of these kids.

Anyway, it’s going to be a long off-season but we got this. We managed to stick it out after mind boggling losses to Tulsa in the AAC so this too shall pass. There’s still a lot to like about Hurley even if it is tough to see at the moment.
 
Comparing almost any coach in history to a guy who may be one of the 5 best is just ludicrous. We love St James. It’s in our dna to do so, but that is crazy pressure to out in anyone with less than 20 years HC experience. Dan Hurley has a lot of learning to do and seems to be improving at the same rate if Andre Jackson. Either will be perfect or totally complete. JC was a true unicorn. Recruiting. Tactics. Prep. Motivation. If you get 2/4 today you have a very high level coach.
Also I appreciate the (good version of )Ollie support. No. No one else at that moment could have done what he did I with that team. He was highly motivated and young enough to connect. He had Durant and Westbrook and lebron and melo on speed dial. They played with purpose the year before. They told the world how hungry they were. He handled the bright lights cause he played under them. Epitome of a Calhoun minded nba guy. Nothing given.
 
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metsfan2323 said:
LOL, lets criticize Hurley for hypothetically not being able to win it all with the 2014 team. Unfreaking real. This place is Looney Tunes.
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What’s wild is how many hypothetical situations people throw out that have no impact on the future.

“In another universe Hurley would have (fill in the blank)….”
 
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Huskyforlife said:
Ollie was a Brimah and one away from losing to St Joes in round 1. The tournament is the worst mainstream way to judge the strength of a program, as much as we hate to admit it.
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I don't fully agree. Some coaches have it in the post season and some don't. Rick Barnes is a perfect example. Dude cannot win when it counts. He's been coaching long enough that it's not random variation. The dude chokes.
 
metsfan2323 said:
LOL, lets criticize Hurley for hypothetically not being able to win it all with the 2014 team. Unfreaking real. This place is Looney Tunes.
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Critical of Dan Hurley but OP is looney toons.

Edit: We both used looney tunes. Didn’t even notice at first. Cool.
 
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Hurley probably hasn’t landed his best recruit yet. It’s still early. Plus, he had some hold overs from a rough stretch of recruiting. I’ll cut him some slack. That slack is good for two more seasons.
 
Ollie gets a really bad rap around here for what he did with what he was given. Got a title out of a depleted sanction restricted roster and tried his best to stick it out while being banished to the AAC.

Between a crazy amount of injuries, transfers, then recruiting (that started off well) taking a nosedive. It was a very unfortunate tenure from a prominent coach. Crazy how we finally joined the Big East after he left. Can’t take that 2014 title run from him though.
 
HuskyWarrior611 said:
Ollie gets a really bad rap around here for what he did with what he was given. Got a title out of a depleted sanction restricted roster and tried his best to stick it out while being banished to the AAC.

Between a crazy amount of injuries, transfers, then recruiting (that started off well) taking a nosedive. It was a very unfortunate tenure from a prominent coach. Crazy how we finally joined the Big East after he left. Can’t take that 2014 title run from him though.
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Was Ollie really "banished" to the American?

IMO, the American would've been just as good as the NBE if UConn would've performed.

Villanova performed up to par. UConn didn't. That was the difference.

Perhaps if UConn would've not had that entire recruiting class defect it may have been different; but - after the OBE split - it made absolutely no difference if UConn would've chosen either the FB group or the Catholic group.

The same issues that killed UConn's competitiveness in the AAC would've happened in the NBE too.
 
I wonder who would have coached Perno's recruits better in the 80's. Perno, Ollie or Hurley?

And why?

TIA
 
Huskyforlife said:
Ollie was a Brimah and one away from losing to St Joes in round 1. The tournament is the worst mainstream way to judge the strength of a program, as much as we hate to admit it.
Expand ...
And Dan Hurley was non competitive in his round 1 games
 
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Austin316 said:
What’s wild is how many hypothetical situations people throw out that have no impact on the future.

“In another universe Hurley would have (fill in the blank)….”
Expand ...
willie99 said:
I wonder who would have coached Perno's recruits better in the 80's. Perno, Ollie or Hurley?

And why?

TIA
Expand ...


metsfan2323 said:
LOL, lets criticize Hurley for hypothetically not being able to win it all with the 2014 team. Unfreaking real. This place is Looney Tunes.
Expand ...


It's always a bit of looney tunes to try and compare how one coach would do in a different era with another coach's players.

OTOH at some point if you want to compare coaches against each other, you have to do some hypotheticals and "what if" scenarios.
 
Nate Miles. This year’s team was pretty tough but not tough enough. New Mexico State was tougher and better particularly Allen.
 
BapeKidd88 said:
Was Ollie really "banished" to the American?

IMO, the American would've been just as good as the NBE if UConn would've performed.

Villanova performed up to par. UConn didn't. That was the difference.

Perhaps if UConn would've not had that entire recruiting class defect it may have been different; but - after the OBE split - it made absolutely no difference if UConn would've chosen either the FB group or the Catholic group.

The same issues that killed UConn's competitiveness in the AAC would've happened in the NBE too.
Expand ...
The American was a bad conference man. There’s a reason everyone was screaming to join the big East. Those Christmas break games against Houston were in front of nobody. Tournament games in Hartford and Memphis? It was hard selling to kids to play in that conference.

That exodus was crazy too. Never saw anything like it from kids who were getting PT. Combine that with AG being hurt every year and the other injury bugs and he couldn’t catch a break. It’s water under the bridge at this point. It’s kind of bizarre how we talk about a coach that has as many national championships as Syracuse though.
 
Ronobro said:
Nobody needs my idiotic take but, like the rest of you, I still can’t get over it.

I’ve read quite a few posts lamenting that our expectations were too high for this group of players; 4/5 starters were mid-major level recruits and they simply had hard ceilings. All season long, though, I’ve been wondering what a Calhoun could have done with this group of kids. I honestly think he’d have won that last game by 20.

Remember that game in 2008 when UConn suspended Dyson/Wiggins and Calhoun took the severely depleted roster on the road to #8 Indiana and somehow got the W? Of course it’s not fair to compare anyone to Calhoun, but eking out wins like that are a large part of what makes a great coach.

I’m absolutely not defending Ollie, but anytime someone mention’s 2014, the most popular criticism is that he won it all with Calhoun’s recruits.

So my moronic unanswerable question is: Would Hurley have won with that 2014 roster? I really don’t think so. Dude probably would have started Brimah, Nolan and Olander together. (Joking, but you get my point)

I refuse to believe that this season was the best a strategic/reflective coach could have gotten out of these kids.

Anyway, it’s going to be a long off-season but we got this. We managed to stick it out after mind boggling losses to Tulsa in the AAC so this too shall pass. There’s still a lot to like about Hurley even if it is tough to see at the moment.
Expand ...
See the numbers in the 'RSCI Top 100' column? You call the roster severely depleted, but it's actually massively more talented than this year's team even without Dyson and Wiggins.

1648037070695.png
 
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BapeKidd88 said:
Was Ollie really "banished" to the American?

IMO, the American would've been just as good as the NBE if UConn would've performed.

Villanova performed up to par. UConn didn't. That was the difference.

Perhaps if UConn would've not had that entire recruiting class defect it may have been different; but - after the OBE split - it made absolutely no difference if UConn would've chosen either the FB group or the Catholic group.

The same issues that killed UConn's competitiveness in the AAC would've happened in the NBE too.
Expand ...
Completely disagree. The AAC (a mid-major conference) hurt our recruiting.
 
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KenPom last year under Ollie, 179. Georgetown this year, 182. It's a fair comparison.
As for the American, it was always decent at the top, but the bottom half absolutely ruined any chance of getting good computer numbers.
 
Inyatkin said:
KenPom last year under Ollie, 179. Georgetown this year, 182. It's a fair comparison.
As for the American, it was always decent at the top, but the bottom half absolutely ruined any chance of getting good computer numbers.
Expand ...
meh computer numbers. Whatever. They are fine for discussion but at the end of the day you win or lose on the court. The day they start out handing trophies for KenPom is the day I stop watching hoops.

Computer numbers in AAC don't seem to hurt Houston the last few years.
 
shizzle787 said:
Completely disagree. The AAC (a mid-major conference) hurt our recruiting.
Expand ...
It absolutely did over the long haul and especially at the end. But at first it seemed we were overcoming it as we were pulling some serious recruits : Daniel Hamilton, Jalen Adams were top,top level recruits, and even as late as 2016-17 top 5 class which at the time via rankings was best class in UConn history. Plus we pulled the top of the transfer market at the time players like Larrier, Purvis, Sterling Gibbs and Shonn Miller. They were among the most coveted transfers in the country in their years.

in my opinion the AAC only truly hurt us recruiting AFTER we became a mess. Then it was salt in the wound. If we could've maintained a high level of play and stayed in top 25 and made the tourney year after year we could've overcome some of the AAC recruiting challenges.

Just like Houston proves the computer number AAC deal wrong, Memphis proves you can recruit to AAC.

You can win and recruit in that league but you have to be consistently at the very top. If you are going to be a middling team, then the AAC absolutely destroys you.

No matter what, we belonged in the BigEast. From day 1. But in summary I look at the time in the AAC as our failure (and Ollies) rather than the leagues fault.
 
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Ronobro said:
Nobody needs my idiotic take but, like the rest of you, I still can’t get over it.

I’ve read quite a few posts lamenting that our expectations were too high for this group of players; 4/5 starters were mid-major level recruits and they simply had hard ceilings. All season long, though, I’ve been wondering what a Calhoun could have done with this group of kids. I honestly think he’d have won that last game by 20.

Remember that game in 2008 when UConn suspended Dyson/Wiggins and Calhoun took the severely depleted roster on the road to #8 Indiana and somehow got the W? Of course it’s not fair to compare anyone to Calhoun, but eking out wins like that are a large part of what makes a great coach.

I’m absolutely not defending Ollie, but anytime someone mention’s 2014, the most popular criticism is that he won it all with Calhoun’s recruits.

So my moronic unanswerable question is: Would Hurley have won with that 2014 roster? I really don’t think so. Dude probably would have started Brimah, Nolan and Olander together. (Joking, but you get my point)

I refuse to believe that this season was the best a strategic/reflective coach could have gotten out of these kids.

Anyway, it’s going to be a long off-season but we got this. We managed to stick it out after mind boggling losses to Tulsa in the AAC so this too shall pass. There’s still a lot to like about Hurley even if it is tough to see at the moment.
Expand ...
To be fair, I don't think Ollie would have won with that team if the tournament were run again. Luck is probably the biggest factor in every NCAA championship, and that year was an extreme example.
 
August_West said:
meh computer numbers. Whatever. They are fine for discussion but at the end of the day you win or lose on the court. The day they start out handing trophies for KenPom is the day I stop watching hoops.

Computer numbers in AAC don't seem to hurt Houston the last few years.
Expand ...
It's not "handing out KenPom trophies," this stuff affects seeding. Historically top seeds do better than low seeds. Not that hard.
 
August_West said:
meh computer numbers. Whatever. They are fine for discussion but at the end of the day you win or lose on the court. The day they start out handing trophies for KenPom is the day I stop watching hoops.

Computer numbers in AAC don't seem to hurt Houston the last few years.
Expand ...
They absolutely hurt Houston, there's a pretty clear outlier in how these teams were seeded

2FF426BE-DE88-4F6A-AAE4-BCF9CE3AA590.jpeg
 
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