[qwerty49]

We may not be mediocre in the context of the last 10 years but we don’t look very good at this moment and at this rate will struggle to reach the postseason for the first time in many years.

With Stanford I believe it always comes down to recruiting - not necessarily closing on the best recruits, but the fact that the pool of admissible recruits is microscopic. It seems there are simply no more than about 2 dozen “difference makers” each year, and maybe only 3-5 have a shot of being admitted. Thus Tara rarely has the luxury of filling holes by position - she needs to get the best available athletes and then build her scheme around what she has. Thus when we were deep in bigs we ran the triangle, now without dominant bigs we are trying to run something else (allegedly Princeton).

So we have little margin of error in recruiting, and we are at the mercy of the pool itself in terms of who we do sign. For example, the Hull twins look to me at like perimeter players in the McPhee mold but one can argue our greatest needs next year are at the 2 and the 5.

Sour grapes, still: We might have had a shot at the NC had we managed to lure Skykar Diggins out of her hometown in South Bend. And we’d be a better shooting team for sure had we managed to keep the Stanford tradition going with the youngest Samuelson.

But to answer your question, I think our recruiting has fallen off a bit recently. I don’t fault our staff - I think this is just the nature of our unique recruiting pool.

How the mighty have fallen.

I know we aren't awful. But it seems we are just north of mediocre. I was an undergrad in the heyday. Can someone who has followed the team more closely than I (who has followed the team casually) explain what has happened? I was used to it being UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, and then a Noter Dame or Baylor every year. Did everyone else just get better? Is this just a weird anomaly?

Please excuse my ignorance.

-m.

[qwerty49]

We may not be mediocre in the context of the last 10 years but we don’t look very good at this moment and at this rate will struggle to reach the postseason for the first time in many years.

With Stanford I believe it always comes down to recruiting - not necessarily closing on the best recruits, but the fact that the pool of admissible recruits is microscopic. It seems there are simply no more than about 2 dozen “difference makers” each year, and maybe only 3-5 have a shot of being admitted. Thus Tara rarely has the luxury of filling holes by position - she needs to get the best available athletes and then build her scheme around what she has. Thus when we were deep in bigs we ran the triangle, now without dominant bigs we are trying to run something else (allegedly Princeton).

So we have little margin of error in recruiting, and we are at the mercy of the pool itself in terms of who we do sign. For example, the Hull twins look to me at like perimeter players in the McPhee mold but one can argue our greatest needs next year are at the 2 and the 5.

Sour grapes, still: We might have had a shot at the NC had we managed to lure Skykar Diggins out of her hometown in South Bend. And we’d be a better shooting team for sure had we managed to keep the Stanford tradition going with the youngest Samuelson.

But to answer your question, I think our recruiting has fallen off a bit recently. I don’t fault our staff - I think this is just the nature of our unique recruiting pool.

How the mighty have fallen.

I know we aren't awful. But it seems we are just north of mediocre. I was an undergrad in the heyday. Can someone who has followed the team more closely than I (who has followed the team casually) explain what has happened? I was used to it being UConn, Stanford, Tennessee, and then a Noter Dame or Baylor every year. Did everyone else just get better? Is this just a weird anomaly?

Please excuse my ignorance.

-m.