As was the case with UK basketball until someone allowed JVC to hijack this program and utilize it for his own personal social agenda.
I just can't figure out how he is allowed to continue doing what he is doing while destroying a once proud basketball program.
The only gold standard left is his bank account....and his ego.
There’s no one secret formula here, but if you want to look closely at how Hurley assembled that team, he really supplemented that roster with good transfers on that team of upperclassman. What’s better, a very good developed upperclassman or a hotshot freshman with no experience who may be 20 lbs under weight for their position?
Look at Carolina, Bacot and Davis are really good players and I’m not taking anything away from them, but they’ve also been around 10 years it seems like and lost a ton of games in their career along the way. Even though they struggled their last 5 games, they’re still one of the 10 favorites to win it all. Look how Hubert rebuilt that team in the off-season. Getting Ingram from Stanford changed that team into much more of a threat. And the kid from Notre Dame as well. Both helped a glaring UNC deficiency in recent years, which is the outside shot. (Other than Love’s 25-30 foot bombs that went in for three weeks in 2022)
Also, UCONN has probably done better than any name program the last two decades in finding “diamonds in the rough” and turning them into stud players. Whether it’s Okafor or Sanogo last year. That goes back to doing the hard work in scouting.
Name programs need to be keeping a strong eye on the portal a lot heavier in the off-season. NIL and transfer portal are the new frontiers unfortunately. Sure bring in a great class of frosh if you can get them but try to surround them with some experienced upperclassman/transfers. Easier said than done I know but damn there were “only” over 1,000 players in the portal last year.
But let’s also be fair, not everything is roses up there. As many Kentucky fans have pointed out, the Huskies are kind of a “feast or famine” program. Either they win a title or they don’t even make the tournament. So when they eat, they eat very very well but when they’re starving, they’re skin and bones.