Nobody has any perspective I guess.
It's December of 2016, we have a grad transfer in CJ Gettys playing, Ibrahima Diallo barely played early in that season, Shaq Doorson could not play more than 3 minutes at a time and Candido Sa was found to provide defense and rebounding.
The staff has landed Doucoure later that month as a big and looks at the roster for the following season and sees Diallo as a backup that probably isn't the best fit BUT he played valuable minutes at times on the road at Seton Hall later that month, but was not healthy most of that season....he decides to transfer after that season to Manhattan.
Shaq Doorson is 340 pounds back in 2016 when Shaq arrives...., he's dragging around a bad foot and the staff starts scouring around for rebounding and size and looks into Shaq Carter during the 2016-17 season, who had a fast start as a freshman JUCO player....I was clued in about Pike making multiple visits to FLA and making headway on his recruitment. We start really recruiting him harder and others gather interest as well.
Fast forward with no Gettys, Sa as a senior and Shaq Doorson is in a walking boot after surgery with no offseason conditioning in the spring of 2017....The staff explores Doucoure enrolling early and that happens, even though it was rumored as a likely item back after the 2016/17 season ended.
We continue to recruit Carter and land him in October of last year....Doorson is still a non factor before last season starts and not healthy and Doucoure, technically a 2018 recruit is now here early, with no summer training camp and vicious learning curve. Sa is still around as a complimentary player that provides better defense and rebounding, which is his role, but he's a senior about to depart......and we have no idea whether Doorson was a viable grad school option at RU or would he decide to take a 5th year elsewhere. You absolutely have to chase down Shaq Carter, there could have been no options up front.
Meanwhile, while we are recruiting Shaq Carter behind the scenes, Jay Young stumbles onto Myles Johnson in Indianapolis in the spring of 2017 and we start looking closer at him....he's also hampered by a bad knee from the prior season and carrying a ton of extra weight, but has a skill set of a small player at 6'10". We quickly and aggressively offer him, along with Georgia Tech and a couple of others...... knowing we may not land Shaq Carter and Myles is convinced that RU is the place for him, our engineering program etc...he's 40 pounds heavier than he should be, but we like his upside.
So Doucoure is a year early, Myles then redshirts because Shaq Doorson is available to play, we have Sa as a 3rd big....and in a pinch, we can go smaller with Freeman and Eugene, so we have the luxury of redshirting Myles Johnson.
From January of 2018 to today, Doorson has gotten into much better shape and worked very hard, Doucoure is still around competing for minutes and Myles Johnson buys into working through his redshirt season, lifts, runs and is transformed into a likely starter next year. Shaq Carter arrives and has to compete against 3 kids already a full year into the system and acclimated to what has to happen.
Right now, Doorson is providing what I expected Carter to provide and Myles Johnson is wildly talented, but very raw....but passes the ball and is likely a year away from being very nice as a complimentary big man. Doucoure is suddenly passed by because of Johnson's progress and Doorson sheds another 20 pounds and can suddenly move around a little bit. Carter goes from a likely focal point 12 to 14 months ago when he was recruited and committed to a person having to fight for time.
I don't see any path for Carter playing a lot, as long as Doorson is healthy and rebounding well and Doucoure is around to provide some threat of offense ....and Myles should play 8 to 12 minutes a night. But the biggest item to note was how uncertain things looked at the time we started pursuing Carter and how happy I am we landed Carter. He is a needed item for this year and next year. On the flip side, I really was happy we snuck in and landed Myles Johnson and that Shaq Doorson is finally able to contribute while healthy. I'm not necessarily concerned with who plays as much as how the team plays in general.
The McConnell item is separate, but I think warrants more time before jumping the gun on a thought there, before we exit November of his freshman season. We already have people believing they have the entire freshman class figured out, when we've played 3 weeks of live basketball and 6 games. Probably not a good idea to jump that far ahead.
