How many 4* recruits does Hurley need to not lose to USF? | The Boneyard

How many 4* recruits does Hurley need to not lose to USF?

Hurley should be questioned sure but to what end...what is it worth to Hurley to lose his team to win a few games in the AAC? We have no idea what the relationship is between the old guys and the new guys... benching AG and Carlton like he should has a net negative impact on the team long term that would be horrible...
 
Everybody always complains how bad our players are and then they go on to say that they don't understand how we lose with all the "4 stars" or all this "talent." Which one is it? Do they stink or are they good. Make up your mind. Perhaps some of these 4 stars shouldn't have been 4 stars. Some guys outplay their ranking and some don't play up to their ranking. These rankings are projections for not yet developed high school players 3 and 4 years ago. They mean less than nothing now. Believe what your eyes tell you.
 
I think you guys a missing the point. No team in AAC (except Memphis this year) has any history of getting any 4 star players and yet Hurley needs them to put a legit team on the floor. How many 4 stars did Tulane's 1st year coach (with mostly new players) need to beat Cincinnati?
 
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Btw, I know it's his first year but UCLA fans are already losing their minds that Mick Cronin, with his fair share of 4 stars, lost to Hofstra and Cal St Fullerton and are 8-7.
 
on our roster I’m more concerned with the (lack of) height/weight on these upperclassmen. The cavalry is coming but for now we get outmuscled at every position
 
Hurley wasn't the one missing layups and easy shots within 3 feet while getting bullied defensively.

Players didn't show up. Hurley should have had them better prepared but at the end of the day he can't make shots for them.

The team is disjointed between the old guard with a history of losing and a talented but inexperienced group of young guys. Hurley can't find the right combinations of players, especially with how inconsistent their play has been.

We desperately need a new era of Hurley's guys. Thankfully, that looks to be the case next year.
 
Husky68 said:
I think you guys a missing the point. No team in AAC (except Memphis this year) has any history of getting any 4 star players and yet Hurley needs them to put a legit team on the floor. How many 4 stars did Tulane's 1st year coach (with mostly new players) need to beat Cincinnati?
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Rankings only mean something if you play up to them. It doesn't guarantee anything. This board is far too rankings obsessed. Outside of our freshman, who are freshman after all, Gilbert was ranked high but was derailed by injuries. Who else is ranked high? Sid? Good athlete but skinny and lacks skill. He was overranked, most likely cuz his athletic ability carried the day in high school but doesn't alone in college. Perhaps there is a work ethic issue thats been alluded to at times. Everyone else is 125+ and the futher away from the top you get, the more hit or miss a prospect gets in general. Players are one dimensional, lacking an important skill, lacking something physically, athletically, etc...Some guys develop, some guys don't and coaching isn't always the reason why.
 
Dove said:
Most people stop drinking for a while after New Year's Eve, nelson.
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Is it my fault that UConn got thumped by two mediocre to bad teams this week?
 
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I do not think there is a benchmark for how many 4*+ recruits one needs to be successful. High school rankings are exactly that and do not always correlate to higher level success.

I have seen plenty of sub 4* recruits all across the country out perform their ranking and plenty high rankings not perform up to that ranking. Once you get to the college level it has more to do with coaching and how much effort these guys are putting in to their craft.

Winning teams execute and are mentally tough. We have not been or done that for quite some time. I am not ready to write Hurley off, but he is concerning me with the statements he has been making in press conferences. He keeps saying that in order to win we have to get rid of the losing attitude, yet the excuses for wins and losses he has made perpetuates that losing attitude.
 
ColchVEGAS said:
I do not think there is a benchmark for how many 4*+ recruits one needs to be successful. High school rankings are exactly that and do not always correlate to higher level success.

I have seen plenty of sub 4* recruits all across the country out perform their ranking and plenty high rankings not perform up to that ranking. Once you get to the college level it has more to do with coaching and how much effort these guys are putting in to their craft.

Winning teams execute and are mentally tough. We have not been or done that for quite some time. I am not ready to write Hurley off, but he is concerning me with the statements he has been making in press conferences. He keeps saying that in order to win we have to get rid of the losing attitude, yet the excuses for wins and losses he has made perpetuates that losing attitude.
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He's being sarcastic, don't take the thread too seriously. However, I have a feeling that if Brian Gregory was coaching UCONN that game and Hurley USF, we would have won the game.

Hurley has a deer in headlights look when the going gets tough. These past 2 games reminded me of what Duke did to his URI team in the NCAA tournament.

It starts with the point guard of the team. You need a steady and tough point guard to be a good team. We don't have that. It trickles down to everyone else.

PS: There is an obsession with weight training on this board with every player expected to look like Emeka. Kemba, Bazz, Boat, Lamb, Roscoe, Daniels, Giffey, Rip, Ray, Amida, Daniel Hamilton, etc were not some workout warriors. They had toughness physical and mental, a motor, a drive, a competitiveness, and of course talent.

This is not simply a problem of more beef on the court.
 
A lot of our fan base gets on Kentucky, Arizona, duke for underachieving with multiple 5 star players. That same logic should apply for us losing to average at best aac teams with our roster having a bunch of 4 star players. It’s not always fair and there are so many other circumstances involved but I think we should at least be able to agree that there’s no excuse for us to be blown out by such a team.
 
Huskymagic said:
PS: There is an obsession with weight training on this board with every player expected to look like Emeka. Kemba, Bazz, Boat, Lamb, Roscoe, Daniels, Giffey, Rip, Ray, Amida, Daniel Hamilton, etc were not some workout warriors. They had toughness physical and mental, a motor, a drive, a competitiveness, and of course talent.

This is not simply a problem of more beef on the court.
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I know it was a different era, but some of the old school guys barely lifted at all. Rod Sellers was not choosing between bodybuilding and basketball when he played at UConn.
 
It’s not just how many individual 4* recruits you have. It’s the sum of total players that makes a team. Ollie seemed to recruit the same type of player for every position. Athletic, skinny, low bb iq, and poor shooters. It’s not just getting good individual recruits but having a vision on how they will play together and fill the gaps for each others short coming as well as highlight each other’s strengths.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
I know it was a different era, but some of the old school guys barely lifted at all. Rod Sellers was not choosing between bodybuilding and basketball when he played at UConn.
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Which is why I brought up the point. People here claim Christian Vital is small when he is clearly physically bigger than some of our best guards(Kemba, Bazz, Boat) have been

Polley is the same size as Roscoe was in his time here or Daniels. Sid is roughly the same size as Giffey was.

Bouknight is roughly the same size as Lamb. Rique same size as Boat.

PS: The difference was that Calhoun players had multiple skillsets and had toughness(mental and physical) regardless of their size. Calhoun also willed toughness into his team there is no toughness about that. Also, we always had a high level big man either NBA caliber or close to it(Emeka, Voskuhl, Josh Boone, Villanueva, Thabeet, Adrien, Oriakhi, Amida).
 
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RJScootin said:
It’s not just how many individual 4* recruits you have. It’s the sum of total players that makes a team. Ollie seemed to recruit the same type of player for every position. Athletic, skinny, low bb iq, and poor shooters. It’s not just getting good individual recruits but having a vision on how they will play together and fill the gaps for each others short coming as well as highlight each other’s strengths.
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Sort of. What he recruited was guys he thought could play in a positionless system. Hurley is also recruiting guys to play in a positionless system. We are getting thumped by teams with fairly standard lineups. If you don’t want that muscular PF who scores inside because he can’t be a stretch 4, them somebody else will take him and your skinny stretch 4 will need to handle him down low. I’m not sure that Hurley or Ollie would ever recruit Jeff Adrien because he can’t play outside.

I think Dan will be a good coach here for a long time, but my concern when he was targeted as the guy is that he essentially has very similar offensive and defensive philosophies to Ollie. Dan Hurley emphasizes pressure on D to a greater extent and taking away the 3. Its very hard to get guys to play in and execute those systems. It requires all your players to be shooters, ball handlers, distributors. If you have a guy with a single skill set he fails. Traditional lineups are the different and try to maximize the specific things those players are good at. The roles are specialized.
 
...as many as it takes licks to get to the center of a tootsie pop.
 
This team lacks mental and physical toughness. I’m really hoping some of these guys don’t rub off on the new guys. It’s going to take more than this class and next years to change this. We need a clean slate to see if Hurley can really do it with his “guys”
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Trying to get a benchmark.
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based on the 247 composite we have five 4* players in the rotation. however, the three freshmen are the only guys that arguably deserve their 4* rank at this point. wilson was comically overrated and gilbert's career was ruined by injury as anyone can see. so the answer is that it takes more than three 4* freshmen to beat USF.
 
bendm said:
based on the 247 composite we have five 4* players in the rotation. however, the three freshmen are the only guys that arguably deserve their 4* rank at this point. wilson was comically overrated and gilbert's career was ruined by injury as anyone can see. so the answer is that it takes more than three 4* freshmen to beat USF.
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USF needed 0 top 200 players to beat a team with 10 top 200 players.
 
nelsonmuntz said:
Is it my fault that UConn got thumped by two mediocre to bad teams this week?
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No. But your drinking has you not seeing the big picture.
 
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Walker11 said:
USF needed 0 top 200 players to beat a team with 10 top 200 players.
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a snarky question gets a snarky answer. he didnt ask about top 200 players, but if he did i would have said we have 9 (not whaley) and they have 1 (mayan kiir)
 
Husky68 said:
I think you guys a missing the point. No team in AAC (except Memphis this year) has any history of getting any 4 star players and yet Hurley needs them to put a legit team on the floor. How many 4 stars did Tulane's 1st year coach (with mostly new players) need to beat Cincinnati?
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You mean the team where a coach came in and turned over the whole roster to bring in his players? Like we're arguing Hurley should have done?
 
UConn has one game left this season (vs. ECU) against a team with a worse NET ranking than USF.
 
HuskyHawk said:
Sort of. What he recruited was guys he thought could play in a positionless system. Hurley is also recruiting guys to play in a positionless system. We are getting thumped by teams with fairly standard lineups. If you don’t want that muscular PF who scores inside because he can’t be a stretch 4, them somebody else will take him and your skinny stretch 4 will need to handle him down low. I’m not sure that Hurley or Ollie would ever recruit Jeff Adrien because he can’t play outside.

I think Dan will be a good coach here for a long time, but my concern when he was targeted as the guy is that he essentially has very similar offensive and defensive philosophies to Ollie. Dan Hurley emphasizes pressure on D to a greater extent and taking away the 3. Its very hard to get guys to play in and execute those systems. It requires all your players to be shooters, ball handlers, distributors. If you have a guy with a single skill set he fails. Traditional lineups are the different and try to maximize the specific things those players are good at. The roles are specialized.
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You nicely laid out both philosophy thanks for reply.
UConn definitely got those positionless players that don’t have a position or play out of position. IWilson “energy” he has nothing he excels at outside of jumping. Whaley isn’t a center, a PF or SF. Carlton a compliment to a good big guy, Polly is a SG that cant dribble, pass, or drive. Gilbert PG that is a decent passer but TO prone, can’t finish at hoop or shoot. Vital is best player on team that brings that philosophy but as a bench player not team lead. Think AA and JB have a chance to fit this system but I’m still a fan of traditional lineup.
 
There is a "winning" gene or a winner's mentality or whatever you want to call it. Some guys have it. They are willing to do the small things consistently everytime out, every day in practice. We have had these guys in the past whether they were All-American's or guys who did one thing particularly well, even if that thing was effort and hustle to make one meaning full contribution in the 2 mins/game they see the floor.

And the back end of the Ollie era we were asking guys to do things they weren't capable of. I don't think there is any other explanation for this team losing to St Joes and USF than we don't have enough guy who are winners. If they didn't show up on campus with that trait, enough certainly didn't learn it in their time here. That's on Ollie breaking the chain of culture, the one reason to hire a former Calhoun player in the first place.

Now it's up to Hurley to instill that. Can he do it? We don't know. He should have been around it based on his family, his father built a winning culture, but that was HS prep ball. He's not embracing the winner play and guys who keep making mistakes sit until they learn ethos of the Calhoun era.

He is short or young in the positions that need the most work, but that isn't an excuse for bad losses. If I'm him, I still start AG or anyone else until they make the same mistake, then play the guys that are running the offense correctly and playing hard on defense. I'd have Adams on standby and give more minutes to Gaffney as he earns them. If that means moving CV to the point, that's what we have to do. If CV is taking plays off or taking too many heat check shots, in comes Bouk. If the freshmen, do too many freshman things, back to the bench. Same for Carlton, Polley, Akok, Whalley and Sid. That's 5 bodies up front even without playing bouk at the 3. Rotate, rotate, and adjust the sets accordingly. Carlton, Whalley, and Akok can all play minutes at the 5. Polley, Akok, and Whalley can all play minutes at the 4. Polley, CV, Bouk, and Adams can all play the 3. Hurley has versitility. He has no reason to stick so rigidly to a set rotation that appears to have a sole objective of stealing a few minutes rest before TV timeouts.
Hurley needs to better there. Half way through the season and 0-2 in conference, no one's feelings should be hurt being held accountable for their performances to date. If they are, they don't belong here. There is a winning combination on the roster, I'm sure of it. It's just not roll out the most "talented" players and work in their backups for 40 minutes. It's watching what's working and not working then adjusting. That too is on Hurley.
 
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