As most UCONN fans have said over and over, we are so happy that Tennessee nation is thrilled with their players. If all those people saw Dunbar, and she's really one of the 3 best shooters in the nation, why have all of them left her ranked north of 70? She must have zero ball handling, zero defense, and play on 1 leg. As for Middleton, same thing. There's a reason why she's rated 25+ if everyone has seen her. Now I could understand it if she played for some random high school and never played AAU ball before, but if she's gone "toe to toe" with some great guards and outplayed them (as folks on your board claim), then that means she's been seen by all the "scouts" and something is woefully wrong with the ranking services.
No one is saying they aren't nice players. But to pretend that you have a top 20 recruiting class at this point is comical. They are probably similar to recent players UCONN has recruited such as Engeln and Gardler and Tahirah Williams. All of those kids were "intriguing" prospects that UCONN landed and Engeln rated as high as 30 by Peach State. Now maybe Dunbar and Middleton will end up being much better than their rating. Maybe they are as terrific as Tennessee fans fantasize about.
As I said in another post, next year you will have starters of Massengale, Carter, Burdick, Graves and Harrison/Russell. You will have solid players off the bench in the other center, Jones, Reynolds, and I'm not sure how much you can expect out of Phillips or Moore. But with the 5 starters i mentioned plus 2 or 3 off the bench, it's not like the freshmen will be needed in big games anyway, so I'm not sure why all the Tennessee fans efforts to convince us that their recruits are world beaters. They are average players who have some nice strengths, and hopefully for Tennessee fans, will develop into very competent role players.
