Those and others are solid players, some of whom played with each other, and none of whom made it to the NCAA tournament with RU. I say that not to be bleak or argue that RU hasn't had crazy fun games at the RAC in the last 15-20 years.
I say it to point out that RU has had lots and lots of years in which you could point to a player or two who are solid, good, or even better than that. RU often gets recruits who are the "future" or who some say form a solid base for the future. RU gets recruits who some think are the reason to believe that the coach is building something, and so on. And in reality it's the same stuff. Because it's not enough. Not even close. Natural optimism has us focusing on the fairly regular parade of a few decent players and one or two better-than-that players and believing that it's something more than it is.
Having one, two or three good players has been almost a constant here. It's not the sign of the future. It's a sign of the same stuff. Getting a well recruited player or two -- not amazing, but solid and talented -- ain't nothing new. Getting a JUCO who's here for a short time and helps ain't new either. It's old.
Solid, repeated and repeated, deep recruiting classes build a program. Or maybe even some sort of massive haul of excellent players in one year. None of that hasn't happened in over 20 years here. On the other hand, lots of misses while getting an isolated real player or two every couple of years doesn't do it. Worse than that, a complete whiff on recruiting in a key year, when the number of scholarship players is already too low, leads to things getting really bad.
