With Ben Howland keeping his job at UCLA on life support by signing a monster recruiting class of ‘One and Done’ talent and other schools like Arizona, and even Indiana pulling in similar hauls, this raises two questions for Kentucky and the Big Blue Nation. One, why aren’t these guys being vilified for taking this approach? And two, what will college basketball look like now that other coaches are competing with Cal in the recruiting arena?
The first question is not a tough one to answer, these guys are just not the polarizing figures that Calipari is on so many levels and, they still aren’t doing it to the degree that he is. There is a cliché that works really well here, “If they aren’t hating, you aren’t really doing anything.”
That brings me to the next question, what do these classes that Ben Howland, Sean Miller and Tom Crean have secured mean? What will they be ‘doing’ next season on the court?
Does Howland have the means to harness the talent he has retained and get Muhammad, who has had a bit of a reputation of a selfish player and a prima donna, to sacrifice for his team? It has already been stated that Muhammad got his wish and will be playing the two guard for UCLA next season. So there is that, combined with the fact that Tony Parker has a reputation for being lazy and spending a lot of his game ‘below the rim’. Howland has had very publicly documented trouble overcoming issues with players like this in the past. I see UCLA’s biggest impact on college basketball in 2012 as having taken what would have been major impact players out of the mix.
Sean Miller is known as a recruiter and is no slouch with X’s and O’s either. He has pulled in a couple of one and done players for 2012 in Brandon Ashley and Kaleb Tarczewski and is primed to get Arizona back to where Derrick Williams had them two years ago.
Tom Crean has proven he can take a group of kids and get them to come together to play to their full potential. He is a great basketball coach who has outstanding talent returning and has added a strong class to the mix. I look for Indiana to be one of the best teams in college basketball next year and the most imposing of the ones discussed here.
The bottom line is that the landscape of college hoops has changed, and though these coaches and programs may not have intentionally jumped on the one and done bandwagon, they now have to figure out how to get these extremely young and talented players to compete against more veteran teams. As the Wildcats proved this season, all of the talent in the world will only get you half way there. You still have to come together as a team and do the dirty work it takes to win basketball games.
Remember ‘the Breakfast Club’ and the question of the chemistry on the team right before Christmas break (and Stacey Poole Jr’s transfer)? Those factors and the way Cal handled them was no accident, and while other programs have now joined Kentucky at the table as far as being uber-talented, they are nowhere near Coach Cal and the CATS (save for perhaps the Hoosiers) in terms of experience with the intricacies of a young team or the skills to manage.
