Exactly. Houston is the best example of a team that mainly has a core of developed players who were recruited by Kelvin Sampson with transfers to add more depth to the team. That is the type of team Pike has tried to build in the past, but he has not been able to maximize the talent on the roster, especially when it comes to game-day coaching.
In today's day in age, you definitely CAN still win with underrecruited players and transfers that aren't in the let's say, Top 30 transfers in the portal for a given season. It just puts more emphasis on knowing how to use your NIL wisely (retention with some transfers to supplement the roster) and building a great team vision/culture that will convince players to stay for multiple years. Otherwise, you need a coach that's ELITE in multiple crucial components of coaching (recruiting, talent evaluation, gameday coaching, etc.)
Looking at a team like Houston, LJ Cryer was a highly ranked transfer in the portal when he transferred from Baylor. However, Kelvin Sampson has recruited players like J'Wan Roberts (outside the Top 200 in his high school class), Emanuel Sharp (outside the top 100 in his class, ranked relatively closely to the likes of Sommerville, Grant, Dortch) have stayed at Houston for multiple years and have developed into very good players. He also got Milos Uzan from the portal (#45 transfer in this year's class from Oklahoma)
Long story short, Pike CAN win with underrecruited players and transfers that aren't necessarily top targets in the portal. The last few seasons, however, he hasn't done a good job maintaining his team's vision to retain the top talent on RU and MAXIMIZE IT --- it seems like since Geo, Ron, Caleb, etc. have left, the program has still been in transition and trying to find the team's old identity.
