Furmanoid wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 2:43 pm
Didn’t say no potential. Said they may not have a ton of potential. Foster is a R-Fr. He is the best of his recruiting year. If he and Hein came in the same year then I’d be more excited about our recruiting. All I’m saying is that it isn’t looking as great as we would like. We get one or maybe two dependable guys a year. That gives you 8 if everything goes well. So why not be open to transfers? They don’t have cooties (unless they come from Coastal).
The problem with your logic is this - coaches sign recruits without being 100% sure how their careers will ultimately play out.
So to get 8 contributors, you can't cumulatively sign 8 HS players, you sign, say, 13 HS players. And while programs are allowed to pull scholarships from players that aren't making a big impact, actually doing so in Furman's case would severely hurt future recruiting and is really not an option.
Someone like Caleb Mills will never transfer to Furman anyway, so keeping a scholarship open for a transfer would almost certainly not result in a star-level player (as those will always go to power conference schools), but it would negatively impact the chances of finding a future contributor from the HS ranks (by having one less HS recruit). So this is one of those situations where doing the "right thing" happens to be the same as the optimum strategy.
With respect to the younger players on the roster, you can't really look at counting stats yet . . . the sample size is too small and the younger players defer to the experienced guys when they are out there. In my view, the big things to look for are (in no particular order):
- potential to create offense/score around the basket
- potential to shoot 3s
- potential to handle/pass the ball
- potential to play high-level defense (obviously more than 1/5th in importance)
- potential to rebound
Few if any players will be strong in all 5, but for instance, Rafferty was strong in 4 of the 5 and decent at the 5th (3s). Bothwell is similar except his 5th category would be rebounding. That's the elite level. Then you have really solid players who are maybe good at 3 of the 5 but play to their strengths - Hunter is a good example.
Applying this to the Paladins in their 1st or 2nd year, I do think it's fair to say that there aren't any obvious elite prospects. Those guys are hard to find in general. But all of those younger players have potential in enough areas that they could turn into a contributor. For star power though, the incoming recruiting class will need a hit or two. It does at least look extremely strong on paper.
