You need to look at the bigger picture to get some context. I always think Gut’s recruiting (as well as his coaching) gets an unfairly bad rap. He really had only two years of full recruiting classes. He became head coach in the October before the 1997-98 season, so there wasn’t much for him to do in terms of recruiting the 1998 HS class at that point. Capel and Lang had already committed. He did then help reel in Ronald Curry, a consensus top 10 recruit (I say helped reel in because Carl Torbush was recruiting him for football as well, but as I understand it, it was the prospect of playing on the basketball team that really excited Curry at the time.)
In 1999, he landed consensus top 5 recruit Joseph Forte, consensus top 15 recruit Jason Parker, runner-up Indiana Mr. Basketball Jonathan Holmes (Gut was looking for a backup PG to play behind Cota and Curry), and Will Johnson, who came to UNC as a Morehead scholar. Unbeknownst to Gut at the time, Vasco Evtimov would not return for his junior year, Ronald Curry would miss the 2000 season with an Achilles injury from football, and Jason Parker would not make the grades to make it onto campus. Needless to say, a recruiting class that consists of a top 5 recruit and top 15 recruit is going to be considered a good recruiting class. Also keep in mind that Gut added Julius Peppers to the basketball team, so Peppers was also part of that class.
When Parker didn’t make the grades, Gut told him to spend a year at Fork Union, and then he could come to UNC the following year. So Gut fully expected Parker— a top 15 recruit from the 1999 recruiting class— to be part of his 2000 recruiting class.
In addition to Parker, the 2000 recruiting class consisted of consensus top 25 recruit Brian Morrison, consensus top 35 recruit Adam Boone, and McDonald’s All-American Neil Fingleton. Unfortunately, Parker did not make it past UNC admissions (even though he qualified under NCAA rules), so he did not end up being part of that freshman class.
If you look at all that, Gut really wasn’t a bad recruiter, but it’s also not like two full years of recruiting is enough to make a truly informed judgment of one’s recruiting ability.
Frankly, Dean Smith’s last three recruiting classes were a bit subpar by the standard he had set. Those recruiting classes were as follows:
1996: Vasco Evtimov, Ed Cota, Michael Brooker, Terrence Newby (Makhtar N’Diaye also transferred from Michigan after the 1995 season, so he would join UNC along with this freshman class in 1996-97 with two years of eligibility left.)
1997: Brendan Haywood, Max Owens, Brian Bersticker, Orlando Melendez
1998: Jason Capel, Kris Lang (As stated above, Curry committed while Gut was coach.) (To be fair, Capel was top 10 and Lang was top 25, so it looked like the makings of a strong recruiting class, and looked like a really good class when Curry was added it to it.)
As for Gut’s coaching, with the exception of the NCAAT first round exit vs. Weber State, Gut did a great job with that 1999 team after losing Jamison, Carter, Williams, and N’Diaye (85% of the scoring for the previous season’s team), and with Evtimov missing 18 games due to the NCAA ruling him ineligible for those games and Capel missing 8 games due to health issues, not to mention Curry missing the first 8 games due to football. Despite all that was lost from the previous season and missing a starter and 2 rotational players for large chunks of the season, he coached that team to final ranking of 13 and a third place ACC finish (when Duke and Maryland both had great teams). He also coached the team to a win over a great Maryland team in the ACCT semifinals.
2000 was a really rough year prior to the NCAAT with the team on the bubble. But imagine what he could have accomplished had the team ended up being what Gut thought he would have after the 1999 season. The team he expected to coach in 2000 was a team that would have consisted of Jason Parker, Evtimov, and Curry, none of whom made it onto the 2000 roster. Curry would have provided the team with a much better backup to Cota than what was available (Newby and Holmes). And Evtimov had potential. In 1999, he averaged 5 rpg in just 11 mpg. That’s 17.6 rebounds per 40 minutes with a decent sample size. He was the highest rated recruit Dean Smith landed in 1996. On top of all that, Brian Bersticker, who appeared to be an integral part of the rotation early on, averaging about 11 mpg, got injured and missed almost the entirety of the season (he played in only 5 games).