Its obviously en vogue to to assume that a basketball rich area would convert to talent at the TE position, but the Jimmy Grahams of the world are rare. Have you watched high school/prep basketball at the elite level ? Kids playing at elite schools in this area do not have the body (in general) to play D1 football. They're too thin and would take years to build a body that could take a beating and realistically contribute, even against the poor talent in the AAC.
If you want to have an offense like Stanford, its not about converting basketball talent to TE, its about getting guys who have size that can block. Its a power run based offense, not based around 6'9 210lb former strong forwards from the bball prep circuit. Also, I think you are under estimating the level of talent that Stanford has. It started with Harbaugh and has continued with Shaw, but they recruit at an elite level (within their difficult standards). The reason that Stanford beat Maryland, is because they have elite talent throughout their roster and executed their scheme at a much higher level. To even remotely hint that uconn can recruit at that level is crazy.
UCONN has a track record of taking talent from the basketball court and converting it to football talent. And I'm not talking about B-ball prep circuit players, I'm talking about raw, big guys that play basketball. Look up a guy named Tavarr Closs from Hartford. I won't bore you with a long list, but in the immediate term, our OT in this 2015 recruiting class from New London was a basketball player that started playing football late in high school, and only ended up on the recruiting radar because of his ability there. I hope he develops as others before him have. We've put players in the NFL, recruited from pick up basketball games. UCONN is a basketball school, and the region is basketball oriented, and we can make that good to our advantage.
If you look back, and re-read you'll see that we don't have to recruit like Stanford does, because we don't play in the Pac-10 and compete with the programs that Stanford does. We need to recruit to compete and win against the competition in the AAC conference. We can do that by recruiting smart athletes with adequate physical ability and speed for the most part. A program like Stanford, gets the smart and the elite talented and fast to compete with the likes of Oregon week in and week out. We aren't there, but there is no reason we can't win lots of games and get nationally ranked anyway.
Recruiting smart football players is a good thing to do, and not something that should be feared or looked at as a negative thing. Recruiting with high academic standards is a GREAT thing. The problem we have at UCONN, is that we are smack in the middle of Connecticut and have lots and lots of schools all around that can offer the same kinds of education that a Stanford does or a UCONN does and recruit smart athletes. It's not something to be feared though, because we also live in a corridor from Washington through to Boston that has close to a population of 100 million people. Finding 85 players that can play elite division 1 football in this region, is not as hard as some would make it out to be. If Diaco is to be a success, it's his recruiting plan that will lead to it for sure, because his game time coaching as a head coach is way behind the curve. So far, everything in that respect is good, Diaco needs to assemble a staff that can apply unified football concepts to a program a whole and develop effective game plans and become and effective game time head coach. That's where the worry with this guy lies.
That's the abstract football look.
Cutcliffe at Duke, has unfortunately, beaten UCONN to the punch in developing the recruiting mantra of being a Stanford type of program on the east coast, but they will always be Duke and will suck, and UCONN can beat Duke.
That's husky true blue talking.
