I think its a combination for a great eye for talent, that Calhoun picks player that fit a certain type of mold that he knows will work well with his team concept. And that he is very demanding of his players which in turn means they get the most out of their experience from learning under him.
I think you nailed it LGH. Jeremy Lamb, case in point. JC zeroed in on JL early on and wanted him over other more highly ranked guard/wings such as Doron Lamb. Needless to say, he chose wisely.
Not all the great husky players fit this paradigm but here is my list of ones who fit that: Lamb, Gordon, Marcus Williams and Ray are three that fit this to a T. All were modestly ranked but JC knew he had something special with all of them.
Guys like Donyell, Caron, Rip, Kemba and Rudy are ones that were highly ranked, but JC knew were special and developed into great players. In Rudy's case, his greatness was not realized to he spent a couple years in the NBA. There aren't many highly ranked UConn players who didn't at least live up to their ranking, while some coaches who stock pile burger AAs have had multiple that underachieved.
Guys like Emeka, Hilton, Boone, Boatright, maybe even Napier fit the dumb luck category. These are players that weren't JC's first choices but caught his eye late and turned out to be outstanding players. In some of the cases they had special abilities others didn't recognize but he did. In all of them he coached just about as much of their talent out of them that was possible.
Although these two dynamics (identifying talent and coaching them up) are big factors they aren't the only ones.
As someone pointed out, ranking hundreds of kids is no easy task. Some get ranked higher than they should based on where they commit. Some that don't play a lot of AAU, which is rare nowadays, such as Ben Gordon, were out of sight - out of mind and weren't ranked as high as they should have been. As I noted above, there's the dumb-luck factor. There have been quite a few cases where the recruit JC had to settle for ended up to be a lot better than the one or ones he would have taken if they had not decided to go elsewhere. Emeka is the poster child for that one. I think the names were Fox and Thompson (might have gotten that one wrong) that JC wanted and ended up settling for Emeka. Kemba is another one. There were a slew of guards, Brandon Jennings being one, that JC was after, but he ended up getting the late blooming Kemba Walker. Kemba, even though he rose up the rankings late, was much better than people realized. This was partly due to him playing behind some very good older players, but also because he had a very good work ethic, which I bet JC looks for in a recruit.
The one thing I've noticed through out the years is the contagious work ethic JC instills on his players. We are constantly hearing about the extra work the great players put in to become great. Ben and Ray used to take tons of extra shots. Emeka worked tirelessly on his post skills. Kemba put in loads of extra time. JC doesn't force anyone to do so. Many of his players see his drive to be excellent and respond to it. He makes players accountable by rewarding minutes to those who work hard in practice and apply what they're learning in games. The ones who don't work hard or make the same mistakes over and over again, don't get rewarded. Oriakhi is a good example. Last season and again this season he had a stretch where he was not doing the things that JC expected and he reduced his PT. As he began to do those things, JC rewarded him with more PT. This season, part of the reason for the decreased PT was also simply playing poorly. I'm hoping Alex will recognize this dynamic and work hard on those things that JC knows will help him excel as a player. Some players never get it. There have been some bigs who thought they were better than they were and wanted to play like a wing or in some cases a guard. Remember Antric Klaibor?
The mistake that lesser coaches make is they don't hold their players accountable. They'll play the ones that come in with a reputation or with true talent, but they don't get better because they play no matter if they make the same mistakes over and over again or don't do the extra work to become special.
There is one other thing that JC does that other coaches fail to do. When he identifies greatness in a player, he'll stick with that player giving them solid PT even if there is another player who's contributing more throughout the first half or so of the season. Lamb is a perfect example. JC knew his best shot at winning in March was to develop Jeremy. Some coaches are constantly changing things, playing one guy for a while then giving up on that player and going to the next player. One player JC tried to stick with for a while as his go-to-guy was Rudy Gay. He ended up going away from that and spreading the office to Denham, Shad and others, because he eventually felt Rudy simply wasn't ready to take his game to that next level. The outcome was not what he wanted, but he was right. Rudy just seemed to disappear late in games like he did against GM. If Rudy lived up to the potential that JC saw in him, he could have lead UConn to another NC. In his case, JC saw greatness but was not able to coach it out of him. Fortunately that's usually not the case.
