@TYOHawk said in Ute came to the right place:
@Texas-Hawk-10 said in Ute came to the right place:
@TYOHawk said in Ute came to the right place:
Here’s the thing…he never tried to recruit over KJ and Dajuan. That’s what puzzling to me and a result of him being stubborn.
This is an objectively false statement. At PG, Self has brought in Bobby Pettiford, Jalen Coleman-Lands, Remy Martin, and Elmarko Jackson.
At forward, Zach Clemence was in the same class as KJ. Others expected to take minutes from KJ were Ernest Udeh, Zuby Ejiofor.
Obviously, none of those options worked out except for Remy for the last few games, but to say Self never attempted to upgrade those positions is just flat out wrong.
This is untrue imo. Pettiford wasn’t ever a threat to take minutes from him. JCL is more of a two guard than anything. Remy…no need to go into that situation but we had an actual nba player coming off the bench for a minute due to Self not benching Harris. Elmarko played the two as well as Arterio Morris even though they were evaluated as point guards. They played as secondary ball handlers cause God forbid anyone actually gets to be the primary handler when Dajuan is on the team.
Clemence came in the same class. Zuby and Udeh are 5’s which theoretically KJ is but he complained about playing the 5. So we moved him to the 4 and have yet to try to upgrade. We passed on getting Harrison Ingram who ended up being a NBA player due to KJ.
Hindsight is easy to claim Self didn’t attempt to because those players didn’t pan out as hoped for. It still doesn’t change that the reality was that Self and staff did attempt to recruit over Harris and Adams.
When Self brought in Pettiford, JCL, and Remy, all in the same class, the expectation was never that Dejuan Harris would be the long term starting PG because he was not a starter at that point. Marcus Garrett was the starting PG during Dejuan’s 1st season playing with Dejuan coming off the bench that year.
The plan the following year was that Remy starts, then Pettiford would take over the following year. Self absolutely recruited that class with the expectation of Pettiford winning that job long term. Also, notice that I did not bring up Aterio Morris because he wasn’t brought in to be a lead guard. Elmarko Jackson was and was forced to move off ball because of Morris being kicked off the team. Jackson was absolutely expected to start as a back up and push Dejuan for minutes as the season went on.
With KJ, Clemence was always the bigger name in the class and expected to take those minutes. KJ played 5 minutes per game as a freshman. He was not guaranteed to start the following year. That happened because Udeh and Ejiofor weren’t good enough to take those minutes. And no, Zuby was not projected to be a 5 long term, he was projected as a 4 long term. That’s the spot he’s playing now at St. John’s. Hunter Dickinson coming in and running those two off changed the outlook of KU that season because there was a lot of talk of KJ also leaving because of Hunter.
So again, just because the players didn’t pan out as expected, that doesn’t change that Self didn’t make efforts early on. Later on, there’s politics involved in recruiting that play into situations like recruiting over multi year starters. For better or worse, the optics of recruiting over guys like Harris and Adams later on would have a negative impact on Self’s reputation among recruits, especially multi year prospects.
There’s absolutely a balancing act involved and too many people here don’t understand how important that aspect of the job is.