(03-23-2022 07:58 PM)Tribeheart Wrote:  HS coaches base their POY and all-state votes on HS production and not talent or next level projection. Chase obviously had a storied HS career over 4 years and congrats to him. W&M offers a great education, an opportunity for immediate playing time, and apparently one of limited D1 offers he had for a paid college degree.

Last November, Big Shots only rated Chase as the 38th best player and 9th best SF in the NC 2022 class. By comparison, one time Tribe offer, AJ Smith, was ranked 9th and 2nd respectively. Their subjective ratings would be based on AAU play, next level projection and actual offers.

W&M is an opportunity for Chase to prove college recruiters wrong. Let's hope he does, and if he does, let's hope the program has progressed enough to keep him here and warrant his loyalty.

It's easy to get caught up in the possibility of Jack Karasinski winning Mr. Basketball for Michigan, but again, that honor should be tempered with respect to any next level projection/expectations. If I recall, Omar was #2 in the KY Mr. Basketball voting, but he was ultimately at the right level/place for having a good college career, and developing into a professional career.

One thing for sure, every player being given priority targeting by Fischer are multi-year performers on historic, winning HS teams. It's obviously a character and culture parameter that he is banking will transfer to his program's performance, moreso than any AAU performance. AAU teams interchange players like a revolving door and are based on short term results now reflected in the current college transfer trend. Let's hope the D-1 pendulum swings back after the pandemic waivers run their course and we no longer see 23-26 year olds still playing college ball.

I'm sure that all four answers have some truth in them...but this response by Tribeheart actually answers the question of why somebody named POY in North Carolina (a populous state that takes basketball more seriously than some others) would want to go to a dumpster-fire program like W&M --- because perhaps he is not actually as good as the POY accolade would suggest. Let's face it, W&M is not the only school where a high achieving academic can pick up a prestigious degree; in fact, there are several of them right there in N.C.. So someone who is both good and smart can still go to a much better team than W&M (which, of course, was the point of my original post). I'm hoping he is that good and the earlier "talent" scouts missed something...but then that leads to the second dilemma that Tribeheart mentioned (and which I bolded above): that if Lowe actually is that good then W&M would retain him for probably only a couple of years. But, sure, it is great to recruit a good player and we should enjoy his contributions and worry about him transferring later.