It seems like such a short time ago, Kansas was not landing many 5-star recruits on a regular basis. We counted on keeping guys for several years and developing them.
Then we started focusing harder on the elite recruits. In the beginning, landing one of these recruits was a luxury. We already had a team of guys with talent and experience, and the elite athlete was "icing on the cake."
I believe this is the first year we are really having to COUNT on recruiting these elite players. I guess we could say the last few years have been feeling like this, but now it is late in recruiting and we still have large holes in our team and it looks like we've put all our eggs in one elite basket.
I wonder what that does to the dynamics of our recruiting, and how it will impact the elites we do sign? Won't we have to "promise the moon" at this late stage of the game?
Will we have to entice players with celebrities, like Calipari does by offering up Drake? Is it going to come to that at Kansas? We've already flipped the coin for luxury apartments.
Listening to players like Maker and Zim make me sick to my stomach. I wonder if some of these other elites think similar but just aren't speaking out. It takes a special player to be able to keep a healthy perspective while being bombarded with flattering attention.
I hope we land some talent soon to fill the holes in our post, but not if it means recruiting players that don't come to Kansas respecting who we are, and acting appropriately. I don't know why but if feels like we are putting a lot of trust in these elites and we will have no time to vet them later. What we get is what we get.
