Agree…..the real prize is Betsey and Ngonba….or at least one of them. Flagg would be gravy.
2025 Recruiting: Cooper Flagg
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Agreed. Of course we want both and Ngongba. But Betsey as the in state kid is almost more imperative. It’s like defending home court as the higher seed in a playoff series. Winning a road game is a bonus. Getting Flagg would be like winning a road game in that analogy.
Waquoit
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And don't forget that tweet from a fellow recruit. The one that said "Just commit now!" I'm thinking that sentiment didn't come out of thin air.
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Flagg obviously moves the needle to a championship level. For my money, Ngongba is the next most impactful possibility for the 2024 class. To me, Nowell, Betsey, Abraham, are the quality complimentary players a team needs, but I think they need the 'alpha' type players as centerpieces for the team to advance deep into tournaments. I can't wrap my head around getting a commitment from a generational talent like Flagg so give me Ngongba as most important non-Flagg 2024. I do enjoy the Betsey-Ross-Flagg scenario mentioned by another poster.
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We've never gotten a kid like Flagg. We've won a bunch of national championships and getting a player of Flagg's talent obviously doesn't equal a championship but the impact of getting a kid like him would be huge for many years to come. It simply raises the profile of the entire school and it's great publicity you'll get for his entire NBA career. Just get the kid on campus...
Gutter King
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This whole thing is only upside. We are being talked about constantly, and if this drags out it's better for us to actually land him AND to keep the brand popping up everytime he has a huge performance. Two outcomes exist:
1) We (expectedly) lost because he was a Duke lock.
2) Hurley and team are now the most feared recruiters in the country, and we can expect national championship contention every year*.
*Realignment sucks.
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Gutter King
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I would expect this staff will never be Diallo'd. So no matter what happens we'll have a top 5 class (presumably Betsey and Ngongba get us there) and if Flagg hits we're all geeking out. What a time to be a fan.
Huskyforlife
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Hope we get a visit, but I don’t think anyone is worried if he doesn’t come.
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It's the resiliency of the staff responding to the unexpected losses of Cockburn with Sanogo; Timberlake with Spencer; and Pettiford with Nowell that most impresses me.
Achiuwa's shift to Montverde and Filipowski's response to Duke's interest served notice that the risks associated with Karaban going to IMG needed to be addressed swiftly & surely, which resulted in his mid-year enrollment at UConn.
It could be said that the loss of Diallo was the setup for successfully recruiting Akok Akok, which was a triple winner in not losing a PSA player; besting Boeheim who cracked Syracuse & setup up the backbreaker of Ajax; and establishing the mid-year entry scenario which preceded the total re-class moves.
The Corey Floyd transfer was a surprise that must have prompted some changes in its aftermath, and I have to imagine that other programs did their best to shake the certainty of Castle's commitment.
Much has been done by this staff to support not getting Diallo'd.
One way or another, the learning from Cooper Flagg's recruitment, from Maine to Florida, will bear fruit.
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Yeah totally. Having a player like Flagg come here tells other future players of his caliber that it’s cool to come to UConn and opens up that next landscape of recruiting that we haven’t ever really been able to access.
That being said, gimme Betsey, gimme Ngongba and Flagg if it actually feels like we have a fighting chance. But man something about Edgecombe scratches this part of me where I salivate for a player like him. I just have this gut feeling about him as a player that is like we need him. He looks like a dogggggg, especially the husky type.
Either way, I’m really enjoying having all these Blue Blood problems to sort through.
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All 3 and i may die of laughter.
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Charlie Villanueva was awfully close, behind only Lebron James and maybe Lual Deng.
cohenzone
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Actually, Corny Thompson was ranked by some as the #1 recruit in his class.
D
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Andre was #1 too. I’m not sure he ended up as #1 after the te class but he was big time.
FfldCntyFan
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Corny was great, without question and I hold him in higher esteem than many as he and I were in the same class. Basically everyone had Mark Aguirre as the top recruit. Landon Turner (won a national title at Indiana) was the only one who was considered by anyone as being ahead of Aguirre (sadly his career ended in a car accident while still at Indiana).
1978 McDonalds All American
I remember when he committed to UConn, I was at a Fairfield U game at the Pit, and the buzz all over the gym was Corny picked UConn over North Carolina. Had his picture on the cover of Parade Magazine IIRC.
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Kid practically lived on campus for an entire semester when he was at PSA and Mamadou was at UConn. I was so mad at the time but there's a world where Diallo goes to UConn, KO keeps his job a while longer, and we don't have a 5th title
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I actually drove to PSA several times to see him play in that parochial school sized cafeteria of a gym. I sat on the auditorium stage... That recruitment still burns me up.
I covered his recruitment when I was Sports Editor of the Daily Campus. Corny and Mike McKay had dinner at my apartment more than once. Great guys.
Once drove Mike home -- to Father Panick Village in Bridgeport -- for a weekend. He told me my car would be safe (bc I was with him) while I went inside to meet his family.
Saw Corny and Mike play against a great NYC kids team at the Bridgeport JCC School Boy Classic. It was a tough contest but Corny eventually took the game over and the Connecticut kids pulled out a victory. That tiny gym was jammed. Dean Smith, Dave Gavitt, Dom Perno, Rollie Massimino, Boeheim, were all there.
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Hopefully Flagg wants to stay closer to home
Does he live in Maine/Quebec or Maine/Boston? There are parts of Maine that aren't closer to anything.
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He’s from Newport, ME. Which is about an hour and a half north of Portland. About 4.5 hour drive to Storrs. So not close. But not far either.
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Played against Corny his junior year in high school (we scrimmaged them at Maloney). He along with Al Marshall, Charlie Muckle and the little PG were really damn good. Cornys fundamentals were good early, posted up like a man and finished so strong. As a team they were so damn fast it was incredible to see, not so much when you were guarding them.
You do realize that his final 4 were the Huskies, UNC, Virginia and Princeton? And there’s a chance he would have gone Ivy if they gave scholarships.
Wish Calhoun was his coach his career at UConn and the NBA would’ve been even better I believe.
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