Stainmaster
Occasionally Constructive
- Joined
- Aug 7, 2014
- Messages
- 21,997
- Reaction Score
- 41,475
You think Shaka, who just had a worse year than we did at Texas, was and is a better option going forward.
Your "reality" doesn't speak for anyone else's.
Road To Redemption
- Thread starter AntG168
- Start date
You think Shaka, who just had a worse year than we did at Texas, was and is a better option going forward.
Your "reality" doesn't speak for anyone else's.
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2015
- Messages
- 695
- Reaction Score
- 486
Here is my version of the pessimistic view. (For the record, I don't necessarily share the pessimistic view, but I can't say I completely reject it, either. It's obviously too early to figure out if it is right or not.)
The run of success from 1999-2014 is a huge positive that we should all be grateful for. For those of us growing up at that time, we just sort of assumed that's how it went. I associate March and April (and CBS' NCAA music) with UConn winning titles.
But the UCLA example is telling in a way you might not have intended. Did things get better for UCLA after 1975? They've been a relatively undistinguished program post-Wooden. Many people are concerned that we are leaving a hugely successful period for a much less successful period, and not just because of the law of gravity (no sports team is that successful forever) but because of changes in the program, conference issues, long-term population shifts away from the Northeast, etc. The question people have is whether this will end up being a temporary lull, e.g. Kentucky from 1998-2012, or whether this is a longer term trend, e.g. what happened to UNLV after Tarkanian left.
Nobody knows what the future holds, and people who have bet on UConn in recent years have done very well. Still, though, nothing lasts forever. We'll see.
- Joined
- Sep 21, 2011
- Messages
- 5,804
- Reaction Score
- 14,357
I don't follow recruiting that closely as excitement over a player.
with a less than 10% chance of coming here strikes me as self mutalation.
I'm also am not privy to the inside rumor mill that has plagued the program for the last 8-10 years.
But these are my observations from my position deep in the Sanoran desert.
Rumors of JC's departure because of his critical illness plagued us in our his last few years and we struggled getting top recruits with a couple exceptions as a result. In fact one could say poor recruiting led to the APR disaster along with the Nate Miles fiasco. When you add these things , a dying couch ( who still looks pretty good) who in the mind of many was the program ,plus the destruction of the basketball conference that put on us on a national stage,the programs death was eminent. I could throw in the Connecticut economic disaster which has continued unabated.
Along comes KO who dispite the odds had success that gave us hope.
But the rumors continued , maybe UConn did the rare thing and defied the odds in achieving a seamless succession but that successor was much to good for the pitiful state of the program and would be off for parts unknown ,leaving backwater UConn to descend back into the depths.
Fast forward until 2016 after shoring up the holes with post grads and transfers.
UConn has a top recruiting class plus a 5 star transfer , six alleged top players joining a great guard and the best big prospect in years rececruited the year before.
The fact that we forget integrating this much new blood is a difficult task at best and was compounded by the immediate injuries to two top recruits and the transfer leaving us pretty much short handed. Adams injuries sealed the demise.
Now the rumors are that KO is not long for the program because of some sort of incompetenc. He went from too good for the program to this state because : fill in the blank
The whole game is "separate the coach from the program by any means possible."
creating a dissonance in the mind of the recruit.
Apparently when you have the kind of success we have had in the last 20 years ,especially when you are considered undeserving ,you make a lot of enemies.
with a less than 10% chance of coming here strikes me as self mutalation.
I'm also am not privy to the inside rumor mill that has plagued the program for the last 8-10 years.
But these are my observations from my position deep in the Sanoran desert.
Rumors of JC's departure because of his critical illness plagued us in our his last few years and we struggled getting top recruits with a couple exceptions as a result. In fact one could say poor recruiting led to the APR disaster along with the Nate Miles fiasco. When you add these things , a dying couch ( who still looks pretty good) who in the mind of many was the program ,plus the destruction of the basketball conference that put on us on a national stage,the programs death was eminent. I could throw in the Connecticut economic disaster which has continued unabated.
Along comes KO who dispite the odds had success that gave us hope.
But the rumors continued , maybe UConn did the rare thing and defied the odds in achieving a seamless succession but that successor was much to good for the pitiful state of the program and would be off for parts unknown ,leaving backwater UConn to descend back into the depths.
Fast forward until 2016 after shoring up the holes with post grads and transfers.
UConn has a top recruiting class plus a 5 star transfer , six alleged top players joining a great guard and the best big prospect in years rececruited the year before.
The fact that we forget integrating this much new blood is a difficult task at best and was compounded by the immediate injuries to two top recruits and the transfer leaving us pretty much short handed. Adams injuries sealed the demise.
Now the rumors are that KO is not long for the program because of some sort of incompetenc. He went from too good for the program to this state because : fill in the blank
The whole game is "separate the coach from the program by any means possible."
creating a dissonance in the mind of the recruit.
Apparently when you have the kind of success we have had in the last 20 years ,especially when you are considered undeserving ,you make a lot of enemies.