Prince Ali also should have caused some concern. That was a major blow, similar to MAL now. Vance was a talented player who was poised to get significant minutes, though I agree his dad is a pain in the ass and not something you want to deal with as a coach, and maybe the IQ was lacking.
Hindsight is 20/20, but Ali has not looked good at UCLA at all so far. The only two CBB players over the past few years I can think of who had to redshirt for non-medical reasons
after their freshman year are Kelly Olynyk (not comparable in any other fashion) and Tulsa's T.K. Edogi (who actually lost his spot on the team for next year).
I was particularly bothered by the comments from the poster who had been in the gym with the dad at his HS games. I don't think UConn has ever had a parent come in like that from the start.
That's an additional data point that should be weighed much more heavily than a guy's reputation in high school.
So like I said above, if we're going with this line of thought, Ali isn't a miss then.
Missing on Diallo was a catastrophe as well. Ditto Diamond Stone, Jesse Govan, etc.
Diallo was a bad miss, but for different reasons. To finish in the top two in this conference, not have embarrassing regular season losses, and regularly make the tournament with a good chance at a trip to the second or third weekend, which is what I think is a good baseline for us as long as we are still in the AAC, we don't
need Top 10-15 guys any more than Calhoun did. I mentioned in an earlier thread that Drummond, Ray, Charlie, Donyell, and maybe Kemba are the only comparably ranked players Calhoun got in his 26-year tenure here (and it might even be a reach to put Diallo on Drummond's level - wasn't he literally #2 in his class?).
It was a bad miss a) if you're a poster for whom the "blue blood" status symbol is important and wants to match up against Duke and Kentucky on the trail and on the court, and b) from the standpoint that in hindsight, the staff put too many eggs in one basket - David Beatty wanted to come here, Bruce Brown may have at one point...those are two players whom I would've loved to see in a UConn uniform.
Re. Stone, Govan, I'm not looking to hash out the same arguments about sanctions or KO simply not having the chops and closing ability in his fourth year of coaching that JC did after doing it since the seventies, since we are simply going to disagree there.
