Transfer Trey Lewis

[BUConn10]

Like many of us mentioned in other threads it was obvious that the fire wasn't there on the sidelines this past year. It was the obvious the divorce was having some effect on him. Did you friend say if he seems to have regained any emotion or is he still in the doldrums? Ollie is a decent, respected, good father from all accounts so the divorce must have been like getting hit with a time bomb. Hopefully he has his zest back now as we need him and his staff to start recruiting a lot better.

No word on whether he has improved his spirits lately, but he said that his wife was just "fed up" with him never being around and now that their kids are graduating high school she decided to move on. He is a very family oriented man and it seems to have taken a toll on him. Unfortunately, the divorce likely makes it easier if KO ever decides to move onto the NBA in my opinion as his family being in Glastonbury for nearly 20 years while he played in the NBA was a major anchor for keeping KO in CT, now that that is gone things may be different. Lets hope things improve.

 

[Matrim55]

Just want to point a few things out:

• We've signed 3 borderline 5-star players in the last two years (Purvis, Hamilton, Adams)
• We'll have more 4 & 5 stars on next year's roster than we did on last year's
• We got our Nos. 1&2 targets last year and Nos. 1&3 this year, missing on Stone
• Our staff has not had a full recruiting cycle together yet

We've generally done very well at the top of our list, getting the guys we absolutely need: Purvis, Hamilton, Adams, Enoch. We've struggled moving further down the list, and I believe there are some pretty obvious answers as to why:

Kids in the '13, '14 and '15 classes started getting recruited when Calhoun was still the coach. Their recruiting ramped up when we were hit with the postseason ban and conference realignment 1-2 punch. Sanctions - limiting the number of our coaches who could go on the road, and the hours they could spend - meant we weren't able to get out to see as many of our targets as other teams, and meant that we struggled a bit with talent ID.

Two examples:

1. Will Jackson, who we spent a ton of time on and actually signed. Then after a closer look, the staff felt comfortable recruiting over him and the kid subsequently left
2. Tevin Mack, who we got onto at least six months - but more like a year - after his other finalists

That's a failure of talent ID on the first, and a lack of resources to cast a wide net on the second. It's also a perfect example of the effect sanctions are supposed to have: they are designed to punish the school.

Obviously we've also lost some painful ones that we probably/possibly should have won (Abu being the most notable, and the Prince Ali thing was a clear duck*-up). Nothing here is perfect.

But context matters when talking about recruiting, and it's too often lacking on this board. Especially since each of the last three classes has gotten successively better, just by the raw numbers.