RawleArenas wrote: ↑Fri Jul 09, 2021 11:58 am
This is why I was despondent about the Lloyd hire. Going into this season we had a team that legitimately had a chance to make a FF run. We had depth at every position, talented newcomers and great (and proven) leadership at the lead guard position. You don't just throw that away for the chance to hire Roy Williams 2.0 (which is a reach, btw).
Washington tried this experiment with Hopkins and it failed horribly. Two time Pac COY but has failed to be consistent or show the grit needed to run a high major. I get the same vibes for CTL. If he somehow manages to reach a FF in year 5, fans will be jumping up and down when Miller had us poised for a run THIS year.
I've said all along you don't get rid of a guy of CSM's caliber without replacing him with someone that's a slam dunk. Plus, I'm not sure if I like the way that CTL recruits. I don't want to be Gonzaga Southwest, and I don't want our program to defer to Mark Few. Gonzaga historically plays a raisin bran type of basketball with a bunch of euros with average defense (which got exposed against Baylor). Miller recruited in a unique way in which he always seemed to pull a rabbit out of his hat. Markkanen, Zeke (who was heavily recruited by UK, KU and UNC), Tubelis, Akinjo (Memphis and Gonzaga wanted him bad) even Ayton. The problem I have with CTL and some of the fanbase is I don't think they understand the work that CSM put into this job, even Damon marvelled at Miller's approach to recruiting. For me, I give him two years. After all, that's all it took Miller to make a major run in the tourney, and he had far less in his cupboard than CTL has.
My starting point is the same as yours. Our roster isn't as strong as when Miller left. Ballo isn't as good as Brown. Kier isn't as good as Akinjo. Pelle is solid, but I'm not sure how much value added there is given his positional similarity to Mathurin and Terry.
Recruiting-wise, Pelle, Ballo and Kier are solid, but not guys that I'm going to say automatically impress me as to Lloyd. We are a high profile program that was down to basically 5 contributors and potentially less. This isn't to criticize those guys, but they're not something I'd judge as unique in quality.
Anderson is a good addition, but then we had Tyty and Kaluma not happen and not much else. So again, not like a dumpster fire, but just not a lot of objective evidence to justify a high degree of confidence.
So, bottom line is Lloyd gets 2 years minimum even if he faceplants, so none of this really matters. What I've seen so far, it seems the short term outlook is worse and the long term outlook is completely hazy and unknown. So it's hard for me to be particularly excited about Lloyd, especially when compared to Miller.