Is this particular recruiting strategy a recipe for coming up short of expectations, or is coaching a college basketball team in the first place a recipe for doing that? It isn't as if Duke and Kentucky have struggled. They're both generally ranked in the top ten and in the conversation for a top seed by selection Sunday. Once you get to the tournament, there's a lot of luck involved.
It's definitely an imperfect philosophy to rely on freshman every year, but the flip side to that would be relying on kids who aren't as talented. Ask Virginia, Kansas, Arizona, Gonzaga, and until recently, Nova, about how reliable that approach is. Sometimes you do sign four year players and it just doesn't work out - look no further than Grayson Allen, who was supposed to be the veteran presence they needed to bust through until he wasn't (incidentally, he did come through as an untested freshman - sometimes you just don't know). Obviously if you can build a roster around multiple five star recruits who stay for three or four years, you do it, but it can be hard to forecast ahead of time who those players are going to be.
