(10-27-2018 10:27 AM)AdoptedMonarch Wrote:  

(10-27-2018 09:37 AM)Hilltopper2K Wrote:  Why shouldn't we get some top recruits? Where is it decided that only P5 schools get those recruits? Our basketball arena is FIRST RATE. A school like Texas A&M gets Bassey and nobody blinks an eye. But A&M doesn't have the history and tradition that we do. A&M doesn't put basketball first like we do. But yet the mass groupthink will accept this as correct.

I'm going to steer clear of the pee-on-each-other aspect of this debate - - as much fun as that is for most threads - - because you raise a very important point:

I truly dislike the implicit assumption that our programs are not worthy of blue-chip recruits. It is just false, and a slander on our schools and on the entire sport of college basketball, that we have allowed ESPN and the other high priests of the media to create that message.

A player like Bassey has just as much opportunity (if not more) to make a splash name for himself at WKU - - just as much as he would at any of Kentucky, Kansas, Duke or any of the other major programs. NBA scouts will see his talents for what they are, and will not discount them for having played a year against "less-elite" competition. If anything, he'll have a chance to stand out even more.

If the coaching is good, and the program is clean (you damn-well better not become our UNC-Chapel Hill, WKU!), an NBA-caliber recruit has just as much, if not more, opportunity to advance his career at one of our programs.

Plus unlike college football we all have a chance to win a national championship and that is the pitch Stansbury uses and players by in to that....Schools like Loyola making the Final FOur never surprises me in college basketball....NCAA basketball, despite a lot of stuff working against us, if you can just get in the NCAA tournament past the "mid major" biases you can go very far....College football none of us have a chance unless they go to a 8 team playoff which I dont see them going to anytime soon...