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Message: [QUOTE="auror, post: 2628925, member: 1329"] Let's do it. To quote Jim Calhoun, "You're not that stupid are you." We beat Louisville for several recruits the last few years. Let that sink in. Either the issue was only prevalent at the top 5* kids, or... "A pretty good story" was what we had 2 years ago. Now we have a very bad story. And bad stories are hard to improve, because perception is reality in recruiting and... Obviously this is why we have a bad story now, coinciding with terrible timing of our new conference affiliation. This year was the worst year UConn's had by KenPom standards (only goes back to '02). We knew the bigs would take a step back, but it's just not good enough. That's all you can say. Any qualms about lack of talent is on him since he's been here over 4 years. Wait. What? We went 3-7 in the AAC over the last 10 games (including 5 home games) with the average loss coming by 11 points. Let me remind you to your point that we had more top 100 recruits in our starting lineup during that stretch than the rest of the entire league has COMBINED. The wins were over East Carolina (300+ KenPom), South Florida (270+ KenPom), and home against non-NCAA-first-round-NIT-loser Temple. 0 top 75 recruits coming in. And the likelihood of landing more following our disaster season is even lower. The backcourt of Adams and Gilbert wasn't working when they were on the court together as neither is a weapon off the ball, because Ollie recruited guards who can't shoot in today's basketball world. He even recruited another one (MAL), who de-committed because of actions (and non-actions) of Ollie. There is turmoil whenever you change coaches: guys transferring out, decommitting, new coach bringing some of his guys with him, etc. If we had another disastrous Ollie year, and THEN a transition year, we might miss the tournament 4 years in a row and the first year of recruiting by new coach is 3 years removed from the tournament. Your coaching options will be worse and the narrative of the team will be cemented to the point that even the excitement over a new hire will not be enough to rejuvenate recruiting and overcome negative recruiting. The risk is too high. If we bring in a new coach now and miss tournament, at least the coach will have had a chance to do some recruiting before then and bring in a circumstances-changing class with the coaching change momentum. Only one program was as bad as we were this year the year before and made the NCAA tournament at large this year, and they fired their coach and brought in 2 5* recruits with the new guy to do it. Ollie would not have been able to turn us around as far as we'd need to improve to get there with the recruits coming in. Also, as you said, the talent cupboard isn't bare entirely AND the three most key pieces are incentivized to stay this year in particular: Gilbert coming off injury, Adams entering senior year but not graduate eligible (far as I know), Wilson coming off transfer redshirt. I agree that Hurley isn't the perfect candidate. He's had good defensive teams but none of his team's have been incredible on offense. But I also don't think we would be able to find the perfect candidate by waiting another year and Hurley is a program builder. You don't take 2 different schools from the dumps to the NCAA tournament by accident. And perhaps our fundamental disagreement is that you think Ollie can turn the negative tide and I think we're in the midst of a downward spiral. If Ollie were still a competitor (or was good enough at coaching), we would have done better this year. He knew this year was a make or break year, and instead we were garbage and embarrassing despite having the most healthy talent in the conference. [/QUOTE]

Verification: First name of men's bb coach