UConn and NBA Brand

[tentoes4rings]

We've thrown a lot of theories around recently on why we're not getting top 100 recruits, especially ones who didn't grow up watching UConn like Adams and Enoch. While we love to throw around championships and the benefits kids get from playing under KO, I think playing in the NBA and who helps them get there is more important to most top kids today. Top kids don't anticipate playing long enough in college to think about their legacy anymore. It will be rarer and rarer to see kids stick around for multiple championships under the current system.

With that in mind, we currently have only 8 kids in the NBA contrasted with as high as 14 at our peak. And of those 8, only Andre, Rudy and Kemba are star caliber players. In KO's 2 years, we have only Bazz in the NBA and he's struggling mightily. Under JC, we were an NBA factory for 22 years and that looks to be steadily waning. Boat has a chance and Hamilton and possibly Amida can both possibly be in the league within two years but with Ray currently gone, our NBA brand and star power looks a little weak right now. In my opinion, this as much as the league we play in may be the biggest factor in our current recruiting woes.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

I agreed that the quantity is not what it was at its peak, but i think now with Rudy Kemba and Andre we have better quality at the top. Obviously Ray is the best outta Uconn ever but Rudy is a near top 10 scorer in the league who has improved his all around game immensely, Andre is arguably the best rebounder in the game and i think when he learns a post game will be a perennial all star, and Kemba was having an all star season until his injury and is a proven leader and clutch performer.

 

[tentoes4rings]

I'll respectfully disagree with you on this. Look at the individual stats of our marquee players from 05-06 to 07-08 and you may rethink that. During that period, Ray was a superstar, averaging 25 a game his last 2 years in Seattle while Ben, Rudy, Caron and Rip were stars as well. Emeka was routinely putting up 13 and 10 on average each season and the alumni depth was at its highest.

Why this period was so important was in that netted us Kemba, Thabeet, Stanley and other important parts of the 2009 Final Four team as well as an early sophomore commitment from Oriakhi. The success of the 08-09 team coupled with all the NBA success at that time had to help land Bazz, Lamb etc from the 2011 Championship Team. Here's hoping Drummond, Rudy, Kemba and maybe an improved Lamb or Bazz can ignite the next wave of Husky talent.

 

[champs99and04]

I don't really buy this. Eight guys may not seem like a lot in relation to schools like Duke and Kentucky, but we aren't losing guys to Duke and Kentucky...we're losing kids to VCU, UNLV, Oregon, etc. If you're a big man considering where to go to school, Andre Drummond is an easy guy to identify with. If you're a point guard, everybody knows who Kemba Walker is. Everybody knows who Rudy Gay is, Ray Allen, etc. There is a prototype at the next level for every player to the point that UConn's track record developing recruits is tough to poke holes in.

 

[gtcam]

Uncle Cliffy and Donyell were nothing to ignore and Rip had some nice years too

 

[tentoes4rings]

We aren't losing kids to Duke and Kentucky huh? So we weren't interestd in Okafor, Briscoe and plenty of other Duke and Kentucky kids recently? How about Cliff Alexander and Oubre from Kansas? We would take those kids all day long if we could get them but we seem to be crossed off their lists early and are now competing as you say with the VCUs and Orgeons for the 2nd tier guys.

And yes, you're right, our track record developing talent was historically great under Jim Calhoun. And while kids seem to love KO as a person, his track record with this is unproven compared to JC's.

 

[CardiacAndre7]

I'll respectfully disagree with you on this. Look at the individual stats of our marquee players from 05-06 to 07-08 and you may rethink that. During that period, Ray was a superstar, averaging 25 a game his last 2 years in Seattle while Ben, Rudy, Caron and Rip were stars as well. Emeka was routinely putting up 13 and 10 on average each season and the alumni depth was at its highest.

Why this period was so important was in that netted us Kemba, Thabeet, Stanley and other important parts of the 2009 Final Four team as well as an early sophomore commitment from Oriakhi. The success of the 08-09 team coupled with all the NBA success at that time had to help land Bazz, Lamb etc from the 2011 Championship Team. Here's hoping Drummond, Rudy, Kemba and maybe an improved Lamb or Bazz can ignite the next wave of Husky talent.

Thats true, can't believe i forgot about the combo of Emeka and Gordon. Wish Emeka could've stayed healthy, had all star potential, knees and back never cooperated.

 

[UConn990411]

UConn has more than enough NBA players to convince recruits to come to UConn.

They just don't have the right guys doing the convincing.

 

[BUConn10]

We've thrown a lot of theories around recently on why we're not getting top 100 recruits, especially ones who didn't grow up watching UConn like Adams and Enoch. While we love to throw around championships and the benefits kids get from playing under KO, I think playing in the NBA and who helps them get there is more important to most top kids today. Top kids don't anticipate playing long enough in college to think about their legacy anymore. It will be rarer and rarer to see kids stick around for multiple championships under the current system.

With that in mind, we currently have only 8 kids in the NBA contrasted with as high as 14 at our peak. And of those 8, only Andre, Rudy and Kemba are star caliber players. In KO's 2 years, we have only Bazz in the NBA and he's struggling mightily. Under JC, we were an NBA factory for 22 years and that looks to be steadily waning. Boat has a chance and Hamilton and possibly Amida can both possibly be in the league within two years but with Ray currently gone, our NBA brand and star power looks a little weak right now. In my opinion, this as much as the league we play in may be the biggest factor in our current recruiting woes.

Unfortunately this has a snowball effect. Lack of an NBA presence is due to a disparity in recruiting. Ranking services of HS players put heavy weight into athleticism and physical characteristics, as these are things that most strongly correlate with success at the NBA level, more so than skill as guys still have plenty of time to learn the game. A dip in recruiting of top players results in fewer NBA prospects, which leads to a smaller footprint in the league over time, which can lead to the program having less "pull" with top recruits who are focused on the pro's (over legacy like you mentioned), creating a sort of self-reinforcing cycle.

UConn has historically been great at developing under-the-radar guys into solid NBA players, but this was definitely mixed in with top level talent with elite athleticism. Our success has been predicated on a balance between the two, not one or the other as some claim. We can't forget that some of UConn's greatest players (Okafor, Kemba, Price, Marshall, Robinson) were all elite recruits out of HS, so the success of these guys is usually a safer bet, but thats just my opinion.

Luckily we are fortunate to have a guy like KO, who I think will eventually (hopefully I should say) bring in the right kind of UConn players to pull us back up to the top.

 

[joober jones]

Some of our guys still have a chance of getting back into the league/making it out of the D-League. I'd say Roscoe Smith has a legitimate chance of being called up and last year Hilton Armstrong had multiple call-ups to the league. If Kuzmic weren't under contract I firmly believe he would've been the final cut from Golden State's roster instead of Hilton, especially with the departure of Jermaine O'Neal. Kuzmic has spent most of this year playing in the d-leauge.

 

[joober jones]

Also, as badly as he's played in the D-League, I think we will one day see Thabeet back in the NBA again. The drop-off isn't so much due to KO being a poor coach as the fact that a lot of the guys we had in the NBA at our peak were marginal players who were kind of hanging on to their roster spots by a thread.

 

[Stainmaster]

Some of our guys still have a chance of getting back into the league/making it out of the D-League. I'd say Roscoe Smith has a legitimate chance of being called up and last year Hilton Armstrong had multiple call-ups to the league. If Kuzmic weren't under contract I firmly believe he would've been the final cut from Golden State's roster instead of Hilton, especially with the departure of Jermaine O'Neal. Kuzmic has spent most of this year playing in the d-leauge.

This all may be true, but we're not shooting for D-League guys to (re)build our brand. Telling recruits "if you go to our school, you can grind it out in Grand Rapids, Boise, and Bakersfield and hopefully get a 10-day contract" isn't going to help.

 

[tentoes4rings]

Also, as badly as he's played in the D-League, I think we will one day see Thabeet back in the NBA again. The drop-off isn't so much due to KO being a poor coach as the fact that a lot of the guys we had in the NBA at our peak were marginal players who were kind of hanging on to their roster spots by a thread.

Right, Voskuhl, KO, Cliffy, Marcus, Donyell at the end of his career fit that mold for sure. But the era I cited had 14 guys and 8 or 9 were superstars or borderline stars or better. It was difficult to find highlights of an NBA game at one point without seeing a UConn guy in them.

The quality depth we had in the league was staggering at one point. Now, of our 8 guys, Ben, Caron and Charlie are reserves, Lamb doesn't play anymore and Bazz is shooting 37% with a slightly better than 1:1 assist to turnover ratio and has had 2 stretches in the D League. We're still far ahead of other programs but we're trending in the wrong direction.

 

[joober jones]

This all may be true, but we're not shooting for D-League guys to (re)build our brand. Telling recruits "if you go to our school, you can grind it out in Grand Rapids, Boise, and Bakersfield and hopefully get a 10-day contract" isn't going to help.

A highly valid point.

 

[tentoes4rings]

This all may be true, but we're not shooting for D-League guys to (re)build our brand. Telling recruits "if you go to our school, you can grind it out in Grand Rapids, Boise, and Bakersfield and hopefully get a 10-day contract" isn't going to help.

Although I've heard Boise is a very nice place this time of year.

 

[joober jones]

Boise is actually a great city if you're going for a visit and not living out your basketball career there. It's an interesting place - going down one of their main roads it alternates almost instantly between cattle ranches/potato field and heavy commercial strips. It's like they couldn't decide if they wanted to be rural or urban so they just threw it all together. It's a good food city too, at least if you're into steak.

 

[champs99and04]

We aren't losing kids to Duke and Kentucky huh? So we weren't interestd in Okafor, Briscoe and plenty of other Duke and Kentucky kids recently? How about Cliff Alexander and Oubre from Kansas? We would take those kids all day long if we could get them but we seem to be crossed off their lists early and are now competing as you say with the VCUs and Orgeons for the 2nd tier guys.

And yes, you're right, our track record developing talent was historically great under Jim Calhoun. And while kids seem to love KO as a person, his track record with this is unproven compared to JC's.

Look at the kids we've lost from the last couple classes...

Jones - UNLV
Ali - UCLA
Mack - VCU
Clarke - VT
Robinson - Florida
Okonoboh - UNLV
Malik Abu - N.C. State
Snider - Louisville
Larrier - VCU
Black - Illinois
Joseph - Syracuse
Perkins - Gonzaga

You get the point. You can complain about us not gaining more traction with the elite kids, but that's a different discussion. The kids that are actually local and/or visiting...those are the ones that we're losing to second and third tier programs. Some have speculated that we lost on some of these kids because of playing time. Others think we lost out because of our conference. Now the thought process that seems to be gaining momentum is that we need a closer on the staff. None of us really know - it's probably some combination of the three - but what can't be disputed is UConn's NBA track record in relation to those other programs. Granted, it's true that most of our pros got there under Calhoun's tutelage, but Napier went from a kid on nobody's draft board to somebody LeBron was openly campaigning for in two years under Ollie, and you don't have to push Kemba too hard for him to talk about what Ollie meant to his development.

And for all the griping...in two years, he brought in Hamilton, Purvis, Adams, and Enocsh. He also signed Will Jackson when he was a highly coveted player, he snagged Prince Ali before something went terribly wrong, and he grabbed pole position for Stone before Under Armor wrestled him away. It's admittedly disappointing that we're missing on so many kids following a national title, but I think a lot of things tend to get overstated in the midst of a bad season.

 

[tentoes4rings]

Look at the kids we've lost from the last couple classes...

Jones - UNLV
Ali - UCLA
Mack - VCU
Clarke - VT
Robinson - Florida
Okonoboh - UNLV
Malik Abu - N.C. State
Snider - Louisville
Larrier - VCU
Black - Illinois
Joseph - Syracuse
Perkins - Gonzaga

You get the point. You can complain about us not gaining more traction with the elite kids, but that's a different discussion. The kids that are actually local and/or visiting...those are the ones that we're losing to second and third tier programs. Some have speculated that we lost on some of these kids because of playing time. Others think we lost out because of our conference. Now the thought process that seems to be gaining momentum is that we need a closer on the staff. None of us really know - it's probably some combination of the three - but what can't be disputed is UConn's NBA track record in relation to those other programs. Granted, it's true that most of our pros got there under Calhoun's tutelage, but Napier went from a kid on nobody's draft board to somebody LeBron was openly campaigning for in two years under Ollie, and you don't have to push Kemba too hard for him to talk about what Ollie meant to his development.

And for all the griping...in two years, he brought in Hamilton, Purvis, Adams, and Enocsh. He also signed Will Jackson when he was a highly coveted player, he snagged Prince Ali before something went terribly wrong, and he grabbed pole position for Stone before Under Armor wrestled him away. It's admittedly disappointing that we're missing on so many kids following a national title, but I think a lot of things tend to get overstated in the midst of a bad season.

You can add Chukwu and Dunn to that list as well. I get your point for sure, and I wasn't trying to indict KO. No doubt that as a former NBA point guard he had a huge impact on the development of Kemba and Bazz. As Stairmaster said though about 10 day contracts, we need to look at why we automatically now assume we can't compete with the Dukes and Kentuckys and have to hope to beat out the programs you mentioned. We have one of the winningest coaches in college basketball history to still leverage, 4 National Champions and a new state of the art Practice facility. Despite the crappy conference, I don't think we should have to sell ourselves short and conclude we have no chance with all the top guys. Something is systematically wrong and needs to be corrected obviously.

 

[Uconn92387]

Amazing what a bad year does to people's thinking. I don't understand how you can expect to get every kid. You have a team of 9 to 10 players max who play every year. You have about 2 to 3 scholarships every year on average. We have to good players Adams and Enoch coming in. Sometimes you lose all your good players after certain seasons. We are in a reloading period. Maybe someone should call every recruit on the top 100 lists and ask them why they didn't choose UConn. Then and only then will you get your answer. Tired of all this negative talk.