Ramblerguy wrote:
That in turn means the staff has to know winning NOW is nice but not the goal of the program, and the coach needs to have the comfort of backing when things go south in the short term.
My take on the portal/NIL era is different. I think your team has to have the expectation that they're making the tourney every year --at least plausibly in the hunt -- or else you're cooked. Long-term team building is a thing of the past. You just can't count on anyone to come back, so you've got to maximize what you've got year-to-year. If you're counting on trying to make the tournament every four years or so, good luck. At best you just become a team that successful teams poach from once we become good.
That's what makes Drew's failure as a game coach so frustrating -- he's done a good job of leveraging our recent success and brand recognition to do well in the portal, but without parlaying that into more tourney appearances, it's kind of dead-end. Kids have a short memory, and current recruits were in grade school for the 2018 run. We had the good fortune of becoming a national brand right before the portal/NIL, but I think that shine is just about ready to wear off.
Can't help thinking this year is kind of do-or-die in that regard. We're losing a lot of guys in this offseason, and given our dropoff in 2024 recruiting, I don't think we can count on landing good replacements in the portal for Braden and Phil, not mention all the depth pieces we lose. At this point we just have to hope the team comes together enough to compete well in conference play, and pray they get hot in the A-10 tourney. If things get truly bad and we lose Rubin or Dawson, might as well just fire Drew and start over.
A good example of how I think the new paradigm affects our current roster construction: at this point I would much rather try to get a good PG in the portal than give much more playing time to Jalen Quinn (who has been our worst player by a decent margin) and hoping he'll stick around. Because if the teams stinks, JQ staying put is a moot point, even if he improves drastically as a junior -- we'll have lost so much talent, and not brought any more in, to completely counteract any improvement he makes.