Good Ol' Letdown Games

[Brayden Green]

It came down to decision time with Loveridge, BYU was very close, but the excitement of the Utes to Pac 12 combined with the letdown of the WCC was the final nail. People forget that Utah was very, very bad for a few years, so Loveridge was a huuuuuuuuge get for them. It was the beginning of turning the tide.

Rose does a great job coaching the limited talent that he gets. We won the MWC, which was a 3 bid and sometimes 4 bid league multiple times with 2 and 3 star talent.

There was a slight dip in recruiting when we announced the WCC and first played there. It is over now. No more last minute JC transfers.

Is the dip due to transition to WCC or something else? Not sure you can say it was just because of the move. Besides, why complain about being in the WCC, it was a nice landing place for our other sports when we pulled the trigger on indepence. We could not have stayed in the MWC, when our football team left. If we had stayed, our football team and other sports would be much less relevant than they are now and we'd never see the games on TV and we'd be going to away games in Wyoming again. Not sure why we need to complain about the move to WCC when it is the hand we were dealt and for now we just make the most of it.

Ps: and our recruiting has been better than ever the past few years so the argument about WCC negatively affecting our recruiting doesn't seem to have any validity.

Then how do you explain the fact that when we announced, and the first year in the conference we took a sharp dip in recruiting? Is that coincidence to you? When you combine that with the fact that high profile guys we were spending a lot of time and effort recruiting chose other schools instead of BYU and cited "Conference affiliation" as big reasons why they chose those schools over BYU....

The POINT of this thread, is that BYU has been seeing the after effects of some light recruiting the last couple years, and has had to rely pretty heavily on JC transfers (like Ambrosino and some of the other SLCC guys) in order to field a compete lineup. BYU doesn't need to have 4 star guys to beat the dregs of the WCC, but they have been playing with much, much less the last few years.

[SpiffCoug]

Then how do you explain the fact that when we announced, and the first year in the conference we took a sharp dip in recruiting? Is that coincidence to you? When you combine that with the fact that high profile guys we were spending a lot of time and effort recruiting chose other schools instead of BYU and cited "Conference affiliation" as big reasons why they chose those schools over BYU....

The POINT of this thread, is that BYU has been seeing the after effects of some light recruiting the last couple years, and has had to rely pretty heavily on JC transfers (like Ambrosino and some of the other SLCC guys) in order to field a compete lineup. BYU doesn't need to have 4 star guys to beat the dregs of the WCC, but they have been playing with much, much less the last few years.

The two bolded statements are in stark opposition to each other. A one year dip when we first joined the WCC - even if I'm willing to concede that point - does mean we have had some "light recruiting the last couple of years" because we haven't.

Our recruiting the last couple of years has never been better. IMO this has more to do with a lack of top-tier LDS talent a few years ago and then when coupled with the lowering of the mission age has taken more time to sort itself out.

But you can't say we had a one year dip and then at the same time say our recruiting has also been light the last few years.

Our recruiting has never been better and with the mission age, next year will likely be the first year that the normal flow of coming and goings of missionaries will have sorted itself out.

[Brayden Green]

Then how do you explain the fact that when we announced, and the first year in the conference we took a sharp dip in recruiting? Is that coincidence to you? When you combine that with the fact that high profile guys we were spending a lot of time and effort recruiting chose other schools instead of BYU and cited "Conference affiliation" as big reasons why they chose those schools over BYU....

The POINT of this thread, is that BYU has been seeing the after effects of some light recruiting the last couple years, and has had to rely pretty heavily on JC transfers (like Ambrosino and some of the other SLCC guys) in order to field a compete lineup. BYU doesn't need to have 4 star guys to beat the dregs of the WCC, but they have been playing with much, much less the last few years.

The two bolded statements are in stark opposition to each other. A one year dip when we first joined the WCC - even if I'm willing to concede that point - does mean we have had some "light recruiting the last couple of years" because we haven't.

Our recruiting the last couple of years has never been better. IMO this has more to do with a lack of top-tier LDS talent a few years ago and then when coupled with the lowering of the mission age has taken more time to sort itself out.

But you can't say we had a one year dip and then at the same time say our recruiting has also been light the last few years.

Our recruiting has never been better and with the mission age, next year will likely be the first year that the normal flow of coming and goings of missionaries will have sorted itself out.

Sigh. This is getting tiresome.

I mispoke, we are experiencing the bad years now, from soft recruiting in the paSt because of conference affiliation.. Jeez. Let's all take our fingers off the buttons and back away slowly before everyone gets hurt on syntax and accidental phrasing ... holy moses.

Yes, our recruiting has been stellar the last couple years. No, we haven't *seen* these players on the court with the exception of Emery and Mika for one year. And oh yeah, EMERY WOULDN'T EVEN BE HERE THIS YEAR IF HE WAS ABLE TO COMPLETE HIS MISSION! You think of that?

We weathered the storm of mission first recruits and one and mission players, like Emery and Andrus, and all those guys.

Can you all imagine what this team would be without Emery this year? Probably another 2 or 3 losses. So yes, we had a couple bad years in recruiting as a result of coming to the WCC, which we are experiencing RIGHT NOW and last year, and some the year before in a direct lack of D1 level talent (which guys like Ambrosino never were, and guys like Cusick and Zylstra and Austin and Harward are just barely over the threshold of being...)

Rose had very limited talent, star wise, the last 3 years and a bunch of walk ons and JC transfers as stop gaps. So yes, it's been a rocky year or two as we ride this out, but BYU is deeper this year than it has been in probably 5 years. Next year will be double the talent and depth, the next year double that, and so on.


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[BlueK]

if the WCC was the main cause of the recruiting having some dry years, shouldn't that trend have confinued? We joined the WCC in 2012. The 2013 class with Emery and Mika was ranked #14 by ESPN. The bad recruiting happened when we were still in the MWC. I guess you could speculate that some recruits knew we were switching leagues, but the trend didn't continue. You would think the WCC should hurt recruiting, but the evidence isn't that conclusive because the recruiting issues happened before we actually started playing in the WCC and then suddenly got better. Would we still have gotten Emery, Mika and the others had we stayed in the MWC. Sure. Would we have gotten Parker and Jackson? I doubt it.

[Brayden Green]

if the WCC was the main cause of the recruiting having some dry years, shouldn't that trend have confinued? We joined the WCC in 2012. The 2013 class with Emery and Mika was ranked #14 by ESPN. The bad recruiting happened when we were still in the MWC. I guess you could speculate that some recruits knew we were switching leagues, but the trend didn't continue. You would think the WCC should hurt recruiting, but the evidence isn't that conclusive because the recruiting issues happened before we actually started playing in the WCC and then suddenly got better. Would we still have gotten Emery, Mika and the others had we stayed in the MWC. Sure. Would we have gotten Parker and Jackson? I doubt it.

We announced the change to the WCC in August of 2010. We joined the conference in September of 2011. So, for the 2011 - 2012 basketball season. There was a dip in recruiting immediately following, but then a miracle hapoened, The Jimmer. People like Carlino and Fischer transfered specifically to play in our uptempo offense,

The point of this thread could (and should be) that Rose has done an awful lot with not a huge amount of talent, and that is a very cool thing. Imagine what it will be when we have not one all star stud, but a team of all star studs. It can and should be much better.

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[hawkwing]

Yay, maybe once we have an entire team of top 50 players we can expect to beat teams that would lose to most BYU intramural squads. Great news everyone.

[Brayden Green]

Or, maybe when players decide to play team ball instead of playing extremely out of position and going after individual accolades, then we start winning consistently.

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[BYULV]

One quick clarification, Emery did complete his mission, although the time frame might have shifted some when he came home for surgery. But he went back out and finished. Either way, I believe he was scheduled to be back for this season.

[Brayden Green]

One quick clarification, Emery did complete his mission, although the time frame might have shifted some when he came home for surgery. But he went back out and finished. Either way, I believe he was scheduled to be back for this season.

You're right. He would have gotten home sometime in May if he had been able to complete a full mission. So we would have had him, but it is safe to say we might not have had him at the level that we do now if he was only home for 3-4 months before the season to get into game shape.

[SpiffCoug]

Or, maybe when players decide to play team ball instead of playing extremely out of position and going after individual accolades, then we start winning consistently.

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Classic. A fan who thinks a team that is ranked 35th (out of 346 teams) in assists doesn't play "team ball".