Biorhythms for UNC @dook: 6:30 Start

SnoopRob said:
Roy certainly made a choice to prioritize multi-year players, which is a big part of why he didn't get as many of the OADs once that era really kicked off.

Even when Roy recruited highly-rated players, he often went after ones who had a hole in their game (height, athleticism, shot-making) that meant they weren't likely to be OAD. And even when Roy did go after OADs, it was pretty clear they'd have to compete for a starting spot and he wasn't promising the build the team around them as other schools did. Roy saw OADs as the icing on the cake rather than all the ingredients to make the cake.

I have no doubt that Roy could have done better in getting OADs by changing his strategy, but he was unwilling to do so. So he settled for more low 5-stars and 4-stars than the elite 5-stars, but he built a program that would succeed that based around those players with a few elites sprinkled in.
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I respectfully disagree. He tried, really, really hard to get one and dones, but had an extremely low hit percentage. He never had the option to get five one and dones because he wasn't willing to pay them what they wanted.


www.thescore.com

Roy Williams: North Carolina has tried to land '1-and-done' talent

www.thescore.com www.thescore.com

"All the guys that they've got, we tried to recruit also," Williams told Andrew Carter of The News Observer. "I mean, there's no question about that. We've been in a time period here where it's been difficult for us to get the top-10, top-20 recruit. There's no question about that."
 
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Calheel said:
I respectfully disagree. He tried, really, really hard to get one and dones, but had an extremely low hit percentage. He never had the option to get five one and dones because he wasn't willing to pay them what they wanted.
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I think that he intentionally made a choice that he wasn't willing to make the promises (or pay the required amounts) necessary to get many of them. It wasn't something forced upon him by the basketball gods nor the University and there was nothing external stopping him from doing so. He willingly made the choice to not go the OAD factory route.

I don't think he wanted 5 OADs per year, I think his preferred team would have been largely upperclassmen with 1-2 OADs added to bring in elite skills. But the fact that he wasn't catering to the OADs turned off a lot of the ones he pursued (and I think he was largely ok with that trade off).
 
SnoopRob said:
I think that he intentionally made a choice that he wasn't willing to make the promises (or pay the required amounts) necessary to get many of them. It wasn't something forced upon him by the basketball gods nor the University and there was nothing external stopping him from doing so. He willingly made the choice to not go the OAD factory route.

I don't think he wanted 5 OADs per year, I think his preferred team would have been largely upperclassmen with 1-2 OADs added to bring in elite skills. But the fact that he wasn't catering to the OADs turned off a lot of the ones he pursued (and I think he was largely ok with that trade off).
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I added a quote to my post above. I think Roy was very honest that he couldn't recruit one and done talent the way he wanted to.
 
Calheel said:
I added a quote to my post above. I think Roy was very honest that he couldn't recruit one and done talent the way he wanted to.
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I agree that Roy recruited OAD talent and didn't get them, but I also think Roy often recruited OAD talent with one arm that he'd tied behind his own back (and then the NCAA stuff tied the other one back there).

A lot of OAD talent wanted promises of guaranteed starter roles, playing time, a certain number of shots per game, etc. Roy wasn't going to promise any of that and recruits knew he often prioritized upperclassmen over freshmen. So the elite OADs often weren't going to choose Carolina because Roy wasn't going to make the promises that other schools made.

But that was a choice Roy made and one he could have changed his mind on at any time; it was a self-selected restriction.

Also, from the article you quoted...

Williams has landed players ranked just outside the top five that likely won't be leaving after one year. The 2014 class that saw him land Justin Jackson, Theo Pinson, and Joel Berry is a perfect example. While those three weren't listed in the top five, they were all ranked as top-20 recruits, but none projected as one-and-done players.

Jackson and Berry are the Tar Heels' leading scorers as juniors this season, while Pinson has battled injuries throughout the campaign, but has shone when healthy.

Roy had a type in his recruits and his type didn't lend itself to getting many OADs. But his type also led to a lot of experienced and talented upperclassmen on a reasonably consistent basis.
 
Everything is so completely different from when Coach Smith, and even Coach Williams, was at the helm that the standards of measurement dating back to those times, while worthwhile as games won and lost totals, are pretty worthless otherwise.

In olden times I looked over the players bios in the programs and other UNC publications (which at least we still provide...some schools don't even bother anymore...a few never did) because I cared about WHO our players are...I wanted to know their majors, and who their parents were, whether they had been college athletes, if the players had been academically inclined in high school or not...I can remember team guides of the past when majors were all over the place rather than concentrated in one that was clearly for athletes (some of the old team guides have that kind of info for posterity even).

Believe it or not there were great athletes that came to Carolina for academics (Rusty Clark rings a bell and we had other good players that went on to graduate and professional schools).

Some players came to Carolina because the beauty of campus lured them here or a particular academic program or maybe even it was Franklin Street. None of that appears to be important anymore...the basketball players (and football for that matter probably for a longer time) are so far removed from the student body as to not be a part of it whatsoever.

I think some of those things were among our greatest advantages when Coach Smith and Williams were running things...and they simply don't matter anymore so it is understandable that, losing those things, would level out our competitiveness overall.

Fuck, why not go to Alabama? Or state college? Or Texas Tech or Houston?
 
SnoopRob said:
I agree that Roy recruited OAD talent and didn't get them, but I also think Roy often recruited OAD talent with one arm that he'd tied behind his own back (and then the NCAA stuff tied the other one back there).

A lot of OAD talent wanted promises of guaranteed starter roles, playing time, a certain number of shots per game, etc. Roy wasn't going to promise any of that and recruits knew he often prioritized upperclassmen over freshmen. So the elite OADs often weren't going to choose Carolina because Roy wasn't going to make the promises that other schools made.

But that was a choice Roy made and one he could have changed his mind on at any time; it was a self-selected restriction.

Also, from the article you quoted...

Williams has landed players ranked just outside the top five that likely won't be leaving after one year. The 2014 class that saw him land Justin Jackson, Theo Pinson, and Joel Berry is a perfect example. While those three weren't listed in the top five, they were all ranked as top-20 recruits, but none projected as one-and-done players.

Jackson and Berry are the Tar Heels' leading scorers as juniors this season, while Pinson has battled injuries throughout the campaign, but has shone when healthy.

Roy had a type in his recruits and his type didn't lend itself to getting many OADs. But his type also led to a lot of experienced and talented upperclassmen on a reasonably consistent basis.
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There is some chicken and egg going on here.

I think both of us agree that Roy wasn’t willing to do what it took to get one and done talent and therefore he had no choice but to focus on the next tier down.

Now, could Roy have changed his spots and pulled a K in 2014? I think that would have been very hard with the NCAA investigation looming and the lack of US Olympic team branding. In other words, I don’t think he really had the ability to play that game when K decided to, even if he were willing to do so.
 
Calheel said:
There is some chicken and egg going on here.

I think both of us agree that Roy wasn’t willing to do what it took to get one and done talent and therefore he had no choice but to focus on the next tier down.

Now, could Roy have changed his spots and pulled a K in 2014? I think that would have been very hard with the NCAA investigation looming and the lack of US Olympic team branding. In other words, I don’t think he really had the ability to play that game when K decided to, even if he were willing to do so.
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A couple more comments...

I think US Olympic team association is way oversold in terms of dook suddenly becoming a OAD machine. Coach K had been the coach for 8 years when dook pivoted to recruiting a lot of OADs. I'm not saying the association with USA Basketball wasn't helpful, but I don't think it was a truly significant input that has become the stuff of myth and legend.

I don't know that the NCAA investigation would have prevented Roy from leaning heavier into OAD recruits unless you think the main way one got OADs was to pay them under the table (which I'll grant is a legitimate view). But, if that's the argument, then there also needs to be a reasonable explanation for how Roy pulled the OADs he got to Carolina.
 
SnoopRob said:
A couple more comments...

I think US Olympic team association is way oversold in terms of dook suddenly becoming a OAD machine. Coach K had been the coach for 8 years when dook pivoted to recruiting a lot of OADs. I'm not saying the association with USA Basketball wasn't helpful, but I don't think it was a truly significant input that has become the stuff of myth and legend.

I don't know that the NCAA investigation would have prevented Roy from leaning heavier into OAD recruits unless you think the main way one got OADs was to pay them under the table (which I'll grant is a legitimate view). But, if that's the argument, then there also needs to be a reasonable explanation for how Roy pulled the OADs he got to Carolina.
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A HoF coach, a famous university, and a tremendous presence in the NBA on the court and in the front offices. The latter was maybe the most important.
 
finesse said:
A HoF coach, a famous university, and a tremendous presence in the NBA on the court and in the front offices. The latter was maybe the most important.
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Carolina had a HoF coach & a famous university and, in 2013, I'm not sure that dook had many more NBA players/FO folks than we did.
 
SnoopRob said:
I agree that Roy recruited OAD talent and didn't get them, but I also think Roy often recruited OAD talent with one arm that he'd tied behind his own back (and then the NCAA stuff tied the other one back there).

A lot of OAD talent wanted promises of guaranteed starter roles, playing time, a certain number of shots per game, etc. Roy wasn't going to promise any of that and recruits knew he often prioritized upperclassmen over freshmen. So the elite OADs often weren't going to choose Carolina because Roy wasn't going to make the promises that other schools made.

But that was a choice Roy made and one he could have changed his mind on at any time; it was a self-selected restriction.

Also, from the article you quoted...

Williams has landed players ranked just outside the top five that likely won't be leaving after one year. The 2014 class that saw him land Justin Jackson, Theo Pinson, and Joel Berry is a perfect example. While those three weren't listed in the top five, they were all ranked as top-20 recruits, but none projected as one-and-done players.

Jackson and Berry are the Tar Heels' leading scorers as juniors this season, while Pinson has battled injuries throughout the campaign, but has shone when healthy.

Roy had a type in his recruits and his type didn't lend itself to getting many OADs. But his type also led to a lot of experienced and talented upperclassmen on a reasonably consistent basis.
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You think Roy had the green light to pay players and families?
 
SnoopRob said:
I’m highly suspicious of claims that everyone else but us was paying recruits yet we reasonably routinely got highly ranked recruits without doing so.
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Well, there was the Nassir Little matter, where the shoe company folks who were paying players and steering them to certain schools were caught on the phone discussing that Little’s family wouldn’t take the money.
 
Icky Mettle said:
Well, there was the Nassir Little matter, where the shoe company folks who were paying players and steering them to certain schools were caught on the phone discussing that Little’s family wouldn’t take the money.
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To me, this isn’t about any one player or situation, it’s about the idea, often floated on Carolina message boards, that OAD recruiting was very pay-based and that’s why Carolina fell behind others, while ignoring that over the years of the OAD era, Carolina did about as well, on the whole, as any other school not named Dook or UK.

To be clear, I’m not making an accusation of wrongdoing by Roy or Carolina, as I have no evidence or even real suggestion of that happening. But I am highly skeptical that the recruiting world was as super super dirty as is often claimed and somehow Carolina succeeded near the top of CBB while being as clean as Andy Dufresne.
 
SnoopRob said:
A couple more comments...

I think US Olympic team association is way oversold in terms of dook suddenly becoming a OAD machine. Coach K had been the coach for 8 years when dook pivoted to recruiting a lot of OADs. I'm not saying the association with USA Basketball wasn't helpful, but I don't think it was a truly significant input that has become the stuff of myth and legend.

I don't know that the NCAA investigation would have prevented Roy from leaning heavier into OAD recruits unless you think the main way one got OADs was to pay them under the table (which I'll grant is a legitimate view). But, if that's the argument, then there also needs to be a reasonable explanation for how Roy pulled the OADs he got to Carolina.
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Interesting...I kind of feel the opposite way. There was a before/after with Coach K and Team USA and how it shaped his perception by top NBA players and top high school players. The Ian OConnor book has an interesting section about this and the advantages he got from being in that post for 12 years. The 2015 OAD team that won the title had several guys who came up the ranks of USA Basketball.
 
UNCMSinLS said:
I haven't seen the game yet. I had to work last night; I've been busy today; and I have to work again tonight. I hope to watch it tomorrow.

I'm not sure the Heels would have won with Caleb Wilson at Cameron, but would his availability have shaved 10 points off the deficit?
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I finally got a chance to watch the game. Wilson would have made a HUGE difference. No way, no how do the Heels give up that many offensive boards in the second half with Caleb in the lineup. Boozer doesn't get an open lane to the basket either. We REALLY missed Caleb Wilson in that game. I'm not saying that we win the game, but it would have been much, much closer.
 
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