@mayjay
In the interest of fostering discourse with you about what you propose, I have eliminated a counter hypothesis I first proposed in this post and instead refocused on your proposal.
While I do not yet follow how your proposed explanation would tend to combine, and recombine drivers, over time, in various situations, to tend to yield the phenomena of recruiting outcomes we observe generally, or in this particular case. Your proposal triggered an interesting question.
Why would adidas-contracted Self at adidas-contracted KU appear to need to more fill holes with more apparent frequency in the ways you describe, than Nike- or AirJordan-contracted coaches at, say, Nike-UK, Nike-Duke, and AirJordan-UNC would appear to need to?
It appears that if adidas-Self were able to sign approximately as many freshman OADS and 5-stars each year , as the other coaches and schools referred to above, he would not have so many holes needing filling in the way you propose, or in any other way?