What good does a pre-season selection do in early April...
A) When nobody has a roster set in stone and the spring signing period just started and ends in another month??
B) Assistant coaches across the country and in the conference may be transitioning to new jobs, which could impact the strengths or weaknesses of a staff and future recruiting classes??
C) Kids that have declared for the draft, may or may not keep their names in the draft??
D) Grad transfer eligible players are more than a month away from graduation and trying to figure out whether to stay with their current school or find new ones.
E) Kids that can verbally commit for 2019, could decide to reclassify back to 2018.
I will say this for the fans that keep saying "the recruiting isn't good enough".......Consider this item, which isn't 100% off the table.
Doucoure (top 150-175 ranked kid) .
Mathis (top 90-125 kid).
McConnell (visiting this weekend, currently around 175).
Aundre Hyatt (heavy interest with prior mention of a potential reclassification to 2018, while unlikely, the door is not 100% closed....another Top 100-125 kid).
On some "rankings" if Doucoure stayed in his reclassified class of 2018 and RU was fortunate enough to land McConnell AND Hyatt, you would have 4 kids considered in the Top 175,-200 range based on their rankings (two Top 100-125 kids and 2 Top 175 type of players).....I don't get into calculations, but that would likely be a legitimate class not typically seen at RU.
While this doesn't change the "RU is picked last again", even if you subtract Hyatt from the 2018 equation, 3 Top 175 players is not something atypical for B1G programs, BUT it's not a typical recruiting class that RU has enjoyed in any consistent fashion.
If I extend that to adding 2 Top 175 caliber players for 2019 (whether that is Hyatt/Mulcahy/Massoud or countless others that are in that range being recruited by RU), it would add 2 more "B1G" caliber contributors.....Or 6 Top 175 kids over 2 classes....that's pretty solid if you ask me.....not great, but not what RU has done over a 3-4 year stretch.
This is not counting the brutally underrated status of Geo Baker being north of 400+ on some rankings for 2017....not counting a somewhat unknown, but somewhat of a wild card in Ron Harper Jr......and not involving the JUCO contributions/rankings of Shaq Carter, considered a Top 10 -15 JUCO recruit......And we have some potential down the road for a Myles Johnson, who was wisely redshirted.
Again, this doesn't mean RU is doing anything super in relation to the rest of the B1G, the fact remains, this just allows RU to close the gap that was enormously wide between RU and other programs in the conference and most Power 5 programs.....AND usually 1 out of 3 recruits don't always develop at the same pace and could get recruited over or transfer out, whether that's at RU or any other school, so just because all of these kids are here, means they are all destined to be difference makers....
It just points out that RU on paper doesn't warrant being selected any higher right now.....Every program for decades has been recruiting players at the level RU is just getting started with now, so they have developed players and refined their rotations/rosters/staffs etc.........RU is still stockpiling/sorting out things....
Complaining about RU not recruiting better, probably isn't an argument that can be applied here, or at least is a stale argument down the road.....It will be a few years of not finishing last and a clear separation that needs to gradually happen from last place, to avoid that mindset, not for the program or current coaches, but a lot of fans here are stuck in a rut..........The goal for some fans seems to be an assumption that once you go from 14th to 12th or 11th, that it's going to change minds across the league....that could have happened this past year and RU would have still been picked 14th for next season..........It's taken Penn State until now, in Year 7 for their rebuild under Pat Chambers, to likely avoid being picked last.....Pike is starting Year 3 OR "Year 1", dependent on viewpoint.
The goal is to not make a random run to a NIT/NCAA bubble level, only to tumble back down to 13th or 14th.....this had to be built in a patient/methodical way to ensure the new floor for the program isn't 13th or 14th, but 9th or 10th or 11th, with a goal of being a 20 win program most seasons.....
