[SamuelMcF]

Well, the writing is on the wall for the one and done rule, so hopefully that changes things long-term. But I agree, Winflop - there's an inherent ceiling on our ability to recruit top classes given current recruiting and NBA prospect dynamics, coupled with our academic admissions requirements, and the two combined mean that only a small fraction of any class's top 100 players will be available to us. I think as casual fans it's easy for us to forget the degree to which these dynamics make it really hard for the coaches to recruit. You think it's a coincidence that all five of our incoming recruits are alums of Northeastern prep schools?

And I guess I had always expected regression this season, because as you can see from the past years of recruiting class rankings, 2014 was our one good recruiting year from 2011-2016, and that class just graduated (including Travis). This year's team has players collectively ranked 35th*, 56th**, 14th, and 20th, and our leadership is supposed to come from the first two years, so nothing about that suggests automatic tournament team.

*And, on top of that, we permanently lost Walker to medical retirement and Sheffield was out all of last season, so our senior class should have considerable asterisks next to it.

**And even one of our juniors, Kodye Pugh, has the playing experience of a second semester freshman - he red-shirted for a year and then got injured and only played in half of last year's games.

Some quick math will show you what we can reasonably expect: among our four remaining upperclass players (Sharma, Sheffield, Pugh, and Stanback), they they have collectively played in a total of 167 games, and started 10 of them. Yes, that's right, among our juniors and seniors combined, they've started in just 10 games and played the equivalent of about 5 seasons, much of it in garbage time. I don't attribute any of that to Haase, and I don't think we as fans fully appreciate the challenges he's faced.

That's not to say there's no reasonable expectations for improvement, however. To me, my major disappointment last season is that we didn't play with fire down the stretches in games. We blew so many big leads and could not put 40 solid minutes together in almost a single game. It's hard to know how much of that is on the coaches vs. the players, because to some degree, mental tightness has to come from within. But that issue is definitely the one I am most concerned about w/r/t this season, and will be looking to see if the coaches have ironed out.

You put my thoughts into words wonderfully. Although college basketball is inherently different from college football due to the timing of declaring for the draft, as with football I still want to wait until the team is full of players and veteran leaders recruited and developed by the new coach's staff before proclaiming that the sky is falling.

[SamuelMcF]

Well, the writing is on the wall for the one and done rule, so hopefully that changes things long-term. But I agree, Winflop - there's an inherent ceiling on our ability to recruit top classes given current recruiting and NBA prospect dynamics, coupled with our academic admissions requirements, and the two combined mean that only a small fraction of any class's top 100 players will be available to us. I think as casual fans it's easy for us to forget the degree to which these dynamics make it really hard for the coaches to recruit. You think it's a coincidence that all five of our incoming recruits are alums of Northeastern prep schools?

And I guess I had always expected regression this season, because as you can see from the past years of recruiting class rankings, 2014 was our one good recruiting year from 2011-2016, and that class just graduated (including Travis). This year's team has players collectively ranked 35th*, 56th**, 14th, and 20th, and our leadership is supposed to come from the first two years, so nothing about that suggests automatic tournament team.

*And, on top of that, we permanently lost Walker to medical retirement and Sheffield was out all of last season, so our senior class should have considerable asterisks next to it.

**And even one of our juniors, Kodye Pugh, has the playing experience of a second semester freshman - he red-shirted for a year and then got injured and only played in half of last year's games.

Some quick math will show you what we can reasonably expect: among our four remaining upperclass players (Sharma, Sheffield, Pugh, and Stanback), they they have collectively played in a total of 167 games, and started 10 of them. Yes, that's right, among our juniors and seniors combined, they've started in just 10 games and played the equivalent of about 5 seasons, much of it in garbage time. I don't attribute any of that to Haase, and I don't think we as fans fully appreciate the challenges he's faced.

That's not to say there's no reasonable expectations for improvement, however. To me, my major disappointment last season is that we didn't play with fire down the stretches in games. We blew so many big leads and could not put 40 solid minutes together in almost a single game. It's hard to know how much of that is on the coaches vs. the players, because to some degree, mental tightness has to come from within. But that issue is definitely the one I am most concerned about w/r/t this season, and will be looking to see if the coaches have ironed out.

You put my thoughts into words wonderfully. Although college basketball is inherently different from college football due to the timing of declaring for the draft, as with football I still want to wait until the team is full of players and veteran leaders recruited and developed by the new coach's staff before proclaiming that the sky is falling.