[NU Sports] hoops and walker

[Michael Vance]

SjT (Stephen J. Truog) wrote:
> With so many kids leaving early, college basketball
> has been turned upside down in recent years and
> recruiting is a really tough game and risky. The
> smaller names that make runs in March seem to have a
> solid core of seniors -- something we could have had
> this year if bad luck hadn't hit Thompson and Parker
> hadn't been a idiot. But the lack of depth really
> showed when the bad luck hit.

I think that you've hit the nail on the head here, Stephen.  What has 
hurt us in basketball more than anything else is a lack of seniors 
playing.  The teams with the stud recruiting classes can afford for 
their best players to bolt as sophomores or juniors every year, but the 
NUs of the world need their seniors to stick around.  When was the last 
time we had an entire class go from freshmen to seniors without anyone 
transferring, getting hurt, going on their Mormon mission, etc.?  Heck, 
even allowing one guy to drop, I think you've got to go back to the Bill 
Foster era, or pretty close.  That's fifteen years!

-Michael