Found out today that one of his handlers and his high school coach is pushing UK. The other handler is pushing Another school.
I am super optimistic
- Thread starter davekersey
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I wanna find out some stuff. Dante completes the best roster in college basketball by a wide margin next season.
I wanna find out some stuff. Dante completes the best roster in college basketball by a wide margin next season.
Got a friend who is a D1 coach that talked to Dantes high school coach and one of his handlers personally at Peach Jam.
Is that coach’s name Chris? Or Tom? Or Chad? Or Mike? Or David? Or Ben? Or Brad? Or Joe?
Was his last name Johnson? Or Anderson? Or Smith? Or James? Or Harrison? Or Jackson? Or Robinson?
Sounds good. Thanks for the update.
Of course, a couple of guys on here say it doesn't matter because since we don't have a composite top 5 on our roster, we won't make the Final Four, so don't waste your time hoping for one this season.
Me, personally... quote one post of mine where I’ve ever said UK won’t make the Final Four without a composite top 5 recruit.
You won’t. It doesn’t exist. I don’t believe that. I think they’ll do it next season. But then again I also thought they would each of the last 3 years also. If they fail again next season it’ll only get louder.
If you want I’ll list every non top 5 composite scholarship recruit Cal has ever signed at UK and you can pick out the one that played in a Final Four. Would that help things? There’s roughly 60-70 of em if my mental math is close.
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We didn’t have to have Zion Williamson for Herro to hit another shot. Keldon just needed to make the right play. Herro just needed to hit the shot.
We most likely would have had a better shot at the Title with Zion. This is honestly an apples to oranges discussion. You can acknowledge that we would be better if we’d gotten some recruits we’ve missed out on without this crazy “gotta be top five” discussion.
Of course if Herro hits one more shot but then we lose to Virginia, it becomes, “We can go to the Final Four with a top 10 guy but can’t win it all.”
There are people who disagree with your last paragraph, which drives me crazy.
You say something should change. What? Start paying players? Staff shakeup?
We have probably made some mistakes, but I feel like a lot of our misses have been out of our hands.
Of course there’s always the “recruit 4 year players” argument. Perfectly valid, but not easy to put this tiger back in the cage.
And if we do, then what? Who is building a team that way and dominating year after year?
I just picked up a negative regarding Jalen green although the staff is still positive there's one out there who's saying green will go to Memphis
Always appreciate math and intelligence smacking some of you idiots around.
Absolutely agree. The guys that were building rosters with 4 year guys all switched to recruiting one and done kids. Izzo, Krywishitski, Roy Williams. Cal has brought in guys that probably shouldn't have been one and done, but were. What's he supposed to do? Kidnap them? Not recruit top 100 kids, anymore? We've seen how that goes. I remember Scott Rigot bringing in Morakenyo Williams.
Also significant in your list is how many of the "Top 5r's" won a Championship? Only one on that list if my memory holds out. It's not a single talent that wins a natty, it's the sum total of the team. I feel a top recruit can make a huge difference in a single game (i.e. AD 2012 title game) but it's still who he is surrounded by and total luck of making it to the final game in the first place.
Wrong. Duke has all that talent and doesn’t make final fours.
It is possible to have one or two top five players on your team and still not make a final four Duke is a good example of that. if you guys want to hear my story about my 13 years of talent evaluating for UK I'll go into the long version of it and explain why ranking players is purely subjective
Actually we had the most success when we had returning starters and veterans that mixed in with top level freshman contributors. (e.i Patterson, Miller, Jones, Harrisons,...) That's what we have this season which makes a high likelihood of getting to F4 and title games
Most, if not all, the other teams have had returning players too! This past team had one of the best returnees we've had in Washington, plus a very accomplished and experienced grad transfer in Reid and still came up short. However, without a top 5 player on the roster Cal has yet to make a F4. We shall see if that changes this year.
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It’s funny when you think you smack anyone around with those alligator arms.
Again, it has nothing to do with Duke or any other program. There’s two programs that employ a heavy dose of the one and done model and one has proven to be better at it than the other the last 10 years.
Again it’s not really about a top 5 number. It’s due to the fact that throughout history of rankings in the OAD era the top 3-5 players are routinely a step above when it comes to performance and reliability of freshman seasons. With The system Cal operates in those guys have been necessary for final fours and championships. To dismiss that is to completely ignore the history and reality and to pretend it’s just all a crap shoot and doesn’t matter is bizarre.
Julius Randle, another top 5, single handedly put our team into the ncaa championship game. Without him we probably wouldn’t have even made an elite 8.
Might be wrong but it seems that people are more interested in defending Calipari’s reputation as a recruiter than acknowledging the facts. To go as far as to say the top 5 is just some silly number is absolutely insane. The term cognitive dissonance comes to mind. Calipari has steadily recruited those players and recruited them hard for a reason. The example of Zion was perfect. Another top 5 guy that if we had, we would have most assuredly cut the nets down just last season.
It just seems that time and time again freshman recruits ranked outside of it are not enough at UK. But when we’ve had those top 3-5 players, we’ve been in final fours and won the tournament.
I cannot understand people’s unwillingness to accept it.
Exactly. And Duke is irrelevant to the discussion. Cal has a totally different system, he’s a totally different coach. We’re talking about what Cal needs, K is another conversation.
Coach K is not who we’re talking about. We’re talking about Cal. If you want to discuss K, the needs totally change.
Come on now. The twisting and turning to try and make a narrative work is pretty hilarious.
You’re gonna get called names.
What’s funny to me is I’ve never once tried to convince anyone that Cal needs top 5 recruits, but only said he’s never made a Final Four since 2007 without one and yet people wanna argue that. You can’t. It’s a fact. What does it mean? I don’t know. Draw your own conclusions. I just pointed it out a few years ago. Seems to me the people that wanna argue it (you can’t) are also subconsciously upset that UK has missed several golden opportunities to get there and that’s where the frustration comes from.
Yea I mean if Cal takes us to a final fournnext year so be it. What it means is he finally had sophomores and juniors and didn’t need those top recruits in class. . But they will change the topic and say “ but I thought Cal needed top 5 players”. No, not when he changes course and starts getting upperclassman. Again, the only goalpost moving are by them not me.
I go a step further than you but I think you understand it just fine. The reason those top 3-5 are so important for KENTUCKY up to THIS POINT is because (shocker coming) that’s where the best and most talented OAD’s in the class reside. And we’ve been so freshman heavy they’ve been necessary.
Seems like that’s far easier to accept than to run with the idea that the historical record over the last 10 years just happened without any of that in play.
I love Aike great guy and smart guy. But to see him reduce the conversation to “well Had Herro hit a shot it’s moot” is just laughable. That’s the point, Zion on that team wins the championship possibly but assures a final four with no ifs ands or asses.
Bizarre that this is still up for debate.
No one is saying it’s all a crap shoot. We are pointing out that we’ve had teams without top 5 players who were literally one shot away from the Final Four.
Those teams would have been better and more likely to make the Final Four with more talent. But they weren’t incapable of making the Final Four with the talent they possessed.
It isn’t all a crapshoot. There were 8-9 teams last year capable of winning the title. We were one of them.
Would I rather have more talent and be the definitive favorite? Absolutely. But I’m not crying in my cereal when we are one of the handful of teams capable of winning it all.
If that’s me defending Cal, then...I guess. Obviously he isn’t recruiting at quite the level he was before. I wish he was still recruiting at that level, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
And our teams are similar in ability to most of the UK teams that I’ve watched my whole life. I’ve been watching for close to 40 years. We go to the Elite Eight about half the time. I always want to be better than that, and some years we are. But I try to be realistic about it.
You both have some very good points but it is a combination of factors that gets you to the final 4 and beyond and it is so much more than a subjective rating of an individual during high school and AAU. Skal demonstrates that and the fact that 20 top 5 over the past 4 years and I believe not one made it to the final four. I believe you need the following:
1. A go to player who can take over the game plus seal it at the end. PJ was close but FTs was the chink in his armor. Fox and Murray both were those kind of players. Monk should have been but never really went all out.
2. A blend of youth and experience. A good blend of talent, athleticism, and experience is hard to beat (2012), (2014 and 2015) yes they all had top ranked players but so did 2013 and 2016.
3. Literally “luck of the draw”. The Cats had it big time in 2018 but didnt have those other things listed above and wasted an opportunity.
I think we all get too wrapped up in should of and could of. I don’t agree with participation trophies above a 6 and under team but I do believe success is measured in much more than NCs or almost any team not named UCONN women's basketball or UK cheerleading should be considered failures I’ve the course of their history.
Forget about Cal for a second. Is not an NC, 4 FFs, 7 elite 8s, and an astounding run in 2015 not a fantastic 10 years by anybody’s reasonable measure? Could it have been better yes by at least 1 more NC and 2 more FFs but those are should of could of. What did occur was an awesome 10 years overall.
But Aike they didn’t go to the final four. Basketball games will be close, shots are missed, rebounds are made, final scores are similar. That’s basketball.
The Chance at final fours is a thin line when you’re talented. Our teams are not scrubs, but again making the final fours and winning titles? The margin for error is extremely small. I think this is the part of my point you’re not getting.
For UK The top 5 in class are usually enough to put us over the top when combined with our talent as we’ve seen over the last 10 years.
Surely you can agree with that?
It’s bizarre to me that you think a Final Four is ever a given.
We couldn’t get there with Wall and Cousins.
In 2016 we had a top 5, the best backcourt in the country, and all those upperclassmen. We know how that turned out.
The actual Zion couldn’t make it with a ton of talent around him, and he was playing for a coach who has been to plenty Final Fours.
I don’t know man, so you are already positioning that if we make it this year it’s because we got Nick Richards, EJ, and Hagans back? But if we don’t make it it will because of no top 5 guys again.
It’s almost as if you’re framing the debate in a way that you can never be wrong.
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Maybe let’s just enjoy the season and see what happens.
If we were routinely getting waxed in the second round, I would agree with you. But losing at the buzzer in the Elite Eight or winning at the buzzer in the Elite Eight are statistically almost identical outcomes. Even if they feel 180 degrees different.
I will agree that there is danger of it getting in your head if you fail to close the deal repeatedly.
It’s bizarre to me that you think a Final Four is ever a given.
We couldn’t get there with Wall and Cousins.
In 2016 we had a top 5, the best backcourt in the country, and all those upperclassmen. We know how that turned out.
The actual Zion couldn’t make it with a ton of talent around him, and he was playing for a coach who has been to plenty Final Fours.
I don’t know man, so you are already positioning that if we make it this year it’s because we got Nick Richards, EJ, and Hagans back? But if we don’t make it it will because of no top 5 guys again.
It’s almost as if you’re framing the debate in a way that you can never be wrong.
Maybe let’s just enjoy the season and see what happens.
Nothing is a guarantee.
Yes if we make the final four this season it has o bearing on this conversation becuase we have upperclassman. That changed everything.
The conversation to me is centered about freshman dominant teams.
You’re not accepting that margins for error are small. It’s a super thin line at the point of final fours and titles. Up to this point with our youth the top 3-5 in class have helped push us over the top.
To the point that if you remove those players over the last 10 years, Cal has zero final fours.
If you can ignore that so be it. We just won’t agree on it.
That’s kind of my point that I think is being missed. Maybe. We have only had one freshmen dominated team with no top 5s. 2018. That team wasn’t very good.
Last year had PJ and Reid. If you want to call that freshmen dominated, then fine. Still only 2 teams. Just not enough sample size to draw a conclusion about whether or not such a team can win a Title.
I think we can all agree that add, say Marvin Bagley in 2018 and Zion in 2019 and our odds of winning increase substantially.
I have no problem accepting that margins for error are small. The tournament is only played once. Run a simulation 100 times and Kentucky beats Auburn maybe 55 times. Doesn’t matter. The one time it counted we lost.
Go back and trace Virginia’s path to the Title. Borderline miraculous. To the victor goes the spoils. But they weren’t “proven” to the best. They got incredibly lucky along the way.
Happens with almost every champion, other than years when there are dominant teams. I would love to be that dominant team again, but I’ll live with what we’ve got.
OF COURSE we have a much better shot at a title with top 5 players, but we've had our chances without them and just blew it!!
Top 5 players can carry a team even as freshmen.
Without them, we're just everyone else, and that's where a lot of luck has to come into play, which is how Virginia won it this past year.
No top 5 players on next year's team, but we have as good of a chance as anyone...
We'll need a little luck somewhere in the tournament to get to the title game.
That's the reality for us and ANY OTHER team without top 5 talent.
Hell, most coaches need luck even WITH top 5 talent!
I still wouldn't trade Cal for any other coach...PERIOD!
Top 5 players can carry a team even as freshmen.
Without them, we're just everyone else, and that's where a lot of luck has to come into play, which is how Virginia won it this past year.
No top 5 players on next year's team, but we have as good of a chance as anyone...
We'll need a little luck somewhere in the tournament to get to the title game.
That's the reality for us and ANY OTHER team without top 5 talent.
Hell, most coaches need luck even WITH top 5 talent!
I still wouldn't trade Cal for any other coach...PERIOD!
I think UK can win it all without top 5 guys. I just think having the elite freshmen increases your chances to get to the Final Four and win a title. So does Cal. It's why he often times offers those guys before he offers guys in the second and third tier. I also want elite players dominating at the next level. It puts UK back to becoming the premium brand in the eyes of elites. As Cal said, they only remember the last two to three years of reference. You change that when you make big recruiting splashes.
On a practical level, part of the reason I want these guys is because elite players can make plays in the halfcourt when the offense breaks down. Those types of guys are hard to come by but are usually found toward the higher end of a recruiting class. Randle was that type of player. So was Knight. So was Derrick Rose.
As for a potential change, I'm tempted to see two things happen:
1. Staff shakeup. Cal has verbally said for years that if you don't continuously innovate new tactics, your rivals will catch up to you. And yet, we've largely had the exact same staff since right before the 2015 season. On a recruiting level, that staff has not performed on the same level as the 2009-2014 recruiting efforts. They've come close, but they've factually landed one top class in that time. Hiring someone like Sam Mitchell would probably land us Green, and that alone would invigorate the program by getting a #1 or #2 prospect (that we haven't had since Towns), a kid who would be seen as a contender for the best wing guard in UK's modern history (he'd certainly be in the running for being our first shooting guard taken in the top 3 of a draft), and give us a new face to the program. We've been relying on guys like Davis and Wall for too many years. Those guys were here 8 to 10 years ago. It's time for some new elite blood to join up and comers like Fox and Murray as NBA torch bearers for the program.
*A move like this would cost Cal some of his loyalty to a guy like Barbee, but Barbee's had his chances and he's brought us very little in returns. Justus is a keeper. Payne is still the guy the recruits mention most. Robic is Cal's old time religion pal, but it might be time to put him out to pasture as well.
2. UK amplifies pressure on the Nike machine to do more for us when it comes to back channels activities.
It makes a big difference when Cal has a top 5 pick on the roster. This is obviously true for most any coach, but especially in Cal's case (he's still the best at coaching freshmen studs and it's not even close).
38 wins in 2008 with a top 5 pick.
33 wins in 2009 with a top 5 pick.
35 wins in 2010 with a top 5 pick.
38 wins in 2012 with a top 5 pick.
38 wins in 2015 with a top 5 pick.
32 wins in 2017 with a top 5 pick.
That's 35.6 wins/year when he has a top 5 pick with an average tourney win rate of 3.8 wins per tournament.
29 wins in 2011 w/o a top 5 pick. *
21 wins in 2013 w/o a top 5 pick.
29 wins in 2014 w/o a top 5 pick. *
27 wins in 2016 w/o a top 5 pick.
26 wins in 2018 w/o a top 5 pick.
30 wins in 2019 w/o a top 5 pick.
27 wins/year with an average win rate of 2.5 wins per tournament.
We're winning 8.6 games more per year when we have top 5 picks on the roster and advancing to 1.3 more tournament wins per year. There's a reason Cal said he wants half of the NBA All-Stars in the league to come from Kentucky.
* Interestingly enough, both of the years features former RSCI top 5 recruits in Knight and Randle who helped carry their teams to Final Fours, which only heightens my point about having elites on the roster. They often give you a better chance to win a lot of games and advance farther in the tournament.
It's not the only way to get there, but for Cal, it's the most probable way and it's why he keeps recruiting the elite of the elite with hopes they come to Lexington.
I agree that most years don't have a dominant tournament team, but some years do, with teams that breeze through most of their tournament games with ease. In recent years, this was the case in 2009, 2012, 2015 (Duke got an easy run but wasn't challenged until the title game), 2018. Even Louisville in 2013 mostly breezed until the Final Four.
The goal is to land as much talent as possible to erase the margin for error. Cal said he watched the UNC team in 2009 and was convinced that was the way to go: lock in as much talent at every spot as possible. Top 5 guys aren't the only way, but getting guys like Green and Randle certainly helps when it comes to making life easier in the halfcourt sets when the games on the line and the offense breaks down.
Since '08:
Cal has won 35.6 games/year when he has a top 5 pick freshman (six seasons of data).
Cal has won 27 games/year when he doesn't have a top 5 pick freshman (six seasons of data).
He's also advancing over a round farther when he has a top 5 pick freshman.
Stats and data don’t matter in this conversation because we almost won that time without one. Keep up Saul
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