re: WOJ bomb: Tom Crean is finalizing an agreement to become the next coach at Georgia, source

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And all Fox got was a job offer from UGA

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I don't think I understand your point here. UGA had just gone 48-51 (15-33 in the SEC) the 3 years prior, and only made the NCAAT because of waht can only be called a truly miraculous sequence of events. UGA was a pretty dreadful job at the time.

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At Georgia they had one of the best WBB coaches of all time and most UGA fans could care less

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We cared a great deal, but it's similar to the hawks a few years ago in the no matter how good they were they weren't gonna be able to beat summit and UT (or lebron and the cavs). It was cool winning a ton of games wiht Landers but he was typically gonna get us ot the elite 8 then out. Awesome for the stat books, but pretty unfulfilling being so close every damn year. Even in the year (95 I think?) where he swept summit during the season, they had to face off again in the title game and we got creamed.

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He will not build a Top 5 to Top 10 type squad

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duh

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can easily see him with a Top 25 to Top 50 team on a regular basis

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We're already essentially a "top 50 team". He's here to get us to be a top 25 team like you mentioned, which I think he can do rather easily.


I'm very excited about the hire.

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We cared a great deal

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I remember when they had good teams and you would have 200 people at the game. Georgia fans turned out in better numbers for gymnastics and tennis. Just seems Athens was not a WBB town.

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Be honest..how many towns do you know of that are "womens basketball towns"?

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Kentucky sucked this year but kept drawing

Hump and Colonial (what 18K) were selling out

Vanderbilt which had way less success was drawing about what UGA was.

PMAC has had crowds for the Tigers

TAMU has always had pretty good crowds

Not a huge deal but UGA just never filled it up when they were doing good. Not sure why but they always felt like they were selling below their success level and the ticket prices were not an issue as I almost picked up 4 season tickets for my cousins in ATL just so I would have good seats when I went.

Seems college basketball in Athens (for M or W) was just never a hot button for the UGA AD's or President's.

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As a perennial bubble team under Fox, we're basically a top 50-ish team

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Crean is an upgrade at every level over Fox

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I like the Crean hire, but I'm going to stop you right here because this is completely glossing over something Fox excelled at better than nearly every other coach in the league

For all of Fox's faults as a coach, he built UGA into a perennial bubble team through some exceptional individual talent evaluation and development. That isn't something that transfers to the next coaching staff


"Fox Specials"

- Marcus Thornton: Rivals 3* ESPN 3*
- Charles Mann: Rivals 3* ESPN 3*
- JJ Frazier: Rivals 3* ESPN 2*
- Yante Maten: Rivals 0* ESPN 3*
- Kenny Gaines: Rivals 3* ESPN 3*
- I'd even include Nemanja Djurisic: too

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I like the Crean hire, but I'm going to stop you right here because this is completely glossing over something Fox excelled at better than nearly every other coach in the league

For all of Fox's faults as a coach, he built UGA into a perennial bubble team through some exceptional individual talent evaluation and development. That isn't something that transfers to the next coaching staff


"Fox Specials"

- Marcus Thornton: Rivals 3* ESPN 3*
- Charles Mann: Rivals 3* ESPN 3*
- JJ Frazier: Rivals 3* ESPN 2*
- Yante Maten: Rivals 0* ESPN 3*
- Kenny Gaines: Rivals 3* ESPN 3*
- I'd even include Nemanja Djurisic: too

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This is something you are *forced* to do if you miss on all of the highly touted guys that you go after.

While we're at it, let's look at those a little deeper:

Marcus Thornton - Nationally #121 composite
Charles Mann - Nationally #195 composite/ #146 on 247
JJ Frazier - Nationally #208 composite/ #156 on 247
Yante Maten - Nationally #225 composite/ #182 on 247
Kenny Gaines - Nationally #143 composite/#129 on 247
Nemy Djurisic - Nationally #201 composite/ 164 on 247

So yeah, 3* sounds bad... until you realize how few 5* and for that matter 4* athletes there are in basketball. If you go through Crean's recruiting resume, you see similar value recruits like 3* Victor Oladipo for example, they just happen to be coupled with 4 and 5 star guys like Cody Zeller and Yogi Ferrell.

The majority of Fox's recruits were of the 3* variety or lower, so he had a bigger number of at bats on "exceptional evaluation" relative to recruiting ranking.

If Crean manages to bring in ~2 top 100ish guys from in-state each cycle, the need to hit home runs on your 3* and lower kids is drastically reduced.



ETA: on the numbers side of things, in football, with most teams taking 25 total recruits, it's obvious why so many athletes are classified in the 4/5* levels. In the basketball world, 4 +/- recruits is a typical class, so the top 50 programs should typically be pulling from the top 200. If UGA wants to be a top 25 program, we're going to need to be grabbing our share of the top 100... rounding that out with quality underrated kids is going to be helpful, but one to two high quality players can dramatically improve performance on the court in basketball.

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Mark Fox Championships
WAC Tournament Championship (2006)
WAC Regular Season Championship (2005, 2006, 2007, 2008)
Awards
3x WAC Coach of the Year (2005, 2006, 2007)

I can take Indiana to a the field of 64, 32 and 16.

Big deal.

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Sweet 16 from 95-09:

Nevada 1 (the year before fox became head coach)
Indiana 1

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he built UGA into a perennial bubble team through some exceptional individual talent evaluation and development

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Eh. A weak sec is what gave this illusion. We saw the real fox this year.

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Let me try to rephrase my point, it sounds a lot like ya'lls argument is that you get to build up from the 2015/16/17 UGA rosters AND you'll add some top 100 talent to it

My point is that realistically if Crean recruits well but not exceptionally, Crean's roster talent/ability won't be meaningfully different from 2015/2016 or even 2017 rosters most years.

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Not exactly. Let's assume for a moment that Crean is able to somewhat consistently bring in 2 or more top 100 players to UGA with an average class size of 4 (even though the 5/8 rule is gone, it's a fair reference point). So instead of needing to bring in four 3* athletes outside the top 100 each year to find 5 starters plus your bench, you're now bringing in 2 top 100 kids, and then filling out the roster with lower 3*s. Some of those kids may end up being studs like a Maten, but the expectation shouldn't be there for you to *need* them to perform at that level just to have an SEC caliber team given that half of your roster is made up of higher rated players.

With basketball, most teams have about 8-9 guys who average substantial minutes over the course of the season... (Auburn for example has exactly 9 this year, even with some injury trouble down the stretch). If over a 4 year period, 8 of your recruited athletes are top 100 players, most of those guys are going to make up your 8-9 substantial minutes played... if you hit on a lower rated guy here or there, it helps to offset guys who maybe don't end up contributing at the level you hoped/expected. For Fox, he didn't have this going for him, so yeah... he had guys who he evaluated well who also were thrust into a position where they had to be a focal point.

If we get 30-40% of the lower 3* "hits" that Fox gave us (and it doesn't even have to be as good... just at least serviceable 10-15 min/g guys) and combine that with the likely 2+ top 100 athletes that Crean should be able to recruit, I think we're playing with house money on the recruiting trail. That skillset translates *much* better at Nevada, or Fox's new destination, Colorado State, where the average player that you're competing against is also lower.

ETA: Here is Indiana's 2015-2016 roster from Crean's B1G CoTY season: LINK

Basically, 10 guys with "substantial minutes" (the last 2 combined for ~23 minutes at 13/9, so tough to drop either).

Of that, you have in order of minutes played per game (not listed) along with their composite recruiting ranking:

Yogi Ferrell - #21
Troy Williams - #50
Robert Johnson - #49
James Blackmon - #20
Thomas Bryant - #20
Collin Hartman - #225
Nick Zeisloft - ?? (don't see ranking) - signed deal with Pacers upon graduation though, not too shabby of an evaluation.
Max Bielfeldt - #321 (grad transfer? Originally at Michigan)
OG Anunoby - #294
Juwan Morgan - #117

So half of the top 10 guys with the most minutes were all top 50 recruits - including all 5 of the top 5. This is what I'm getting at... If Crean recruits "half as well" at UGA as he did at Indiana, make those guys top 100 instead of top 50... they still likely take up the lions share of minutes, so you still need less production from your lower rated recruits that are brought in.

If Crean manages to pull in Hagans to not only sign but reclassify for 18 as many suspect he may do, it will be a great start.