Have you not heard of the Transfer Portal? No player is "stuck" anywhere anymore.
That, and if you have a group of good (not top level) players on your team, there’s a good chance they mesh well together even without the top level talent and want to see how far they can get the following year. Or perhaps some Graduate transfers or Juco transfers would consider coming here.
Say PBS were the same level coach as Rob Jeter: most people would call that "average," I'd say a bit above-average. I can tell you exactly how that level coach would plan this.
He'd have the kid commit early, most likely the spring of his junior year, then he'd use the remaining 4-5 scholarships on a few different players. Get two who are top-100, maybe one is top-50 with NBA aspirations. Get an underrecruited one-year JUCO to plug a hole with three years of eligibility left (think Tiby), one on a top-tier JUCO player and the last one on the best HS player you can get.
Then you're walking into this one season with the top-5 son and you've got one guy who has real NBA aspirations at a complementary position (think small forward), a top-100 that is most likely a talented-but-undersized point guard with a high motor, a freshman to come off the bench for whatever position he plays, and a couple JUCO bigs (one 1-year, the other a more highly-recruited 2-year JUCO) to absolutely crash the boards. If you're lucky you get a Tiby out of it who can also hit threes.
1: top-100 PG
2: Dree Gholston
3: top-50 SF
4: PBJ
5: top-tier JuCo/Fifth year big
Off the bench:
6: Tiby-like one-year JuCo
7: Te'Jon (because a coach at Jeter's level who doesn't lose a lot to transfer wouldn't have lost Te'Jon)
8: JT
9: best HS senior you can recruit
The 10th guy on that team would literally be like...Vin Baker Jr.
After the year, assume you lose the top-5 kid to the NBA and maybe even the top-50 kid. Maybe the top-50 kid transfers to a better program, but I'd actually
doubt that because you'd tell that kid he's got an established roster that he plays well with and he's now "the guy." Unless that kid hates the coaching staff, he's going to take the opportunity to put up 25 ppg and set himself up for the NBA Draft.
A coach who actually knew what he was doing and had a staff that could recruit well for this level could have put together an absolute monster of a program.
If you had a coach like Bruce Pearl, this is what that roster could look like:
1: Top-tier two year JuCo PG
2: Dree Gholston
3: Top-tier two year JuCo or 5th-year stud SF
4: PBJ
5: Top-tier two year JuCo Center
6: Immediately-available strong high-major or JuCo transfer (not 5th year)
7: Te'Jon (no way Pearl would lose Te'Jon)
8: Local Wisconsin HS recruit with mid-major starter upside
9: JT
10: Local Wisconsin HS recruit who *might* be a mid-major starter by year 4
In year 2 if the Pearl-like coach is still here (unlikely), he just replaces PBJ/Te'Jon/JT with two top-tier JuCo's and a 2nd-tier JuCo who slasher who is happy coming off the bench in year 1 (like Boo Davis).
Basically I'm saying none of the coaches we'd have going back to Bo Ryan would have f***ed this up. If you get a top-5 recruit to pick your university and you give yourself enough time, you should be able to put a very strong program around him.
Either Pat Baldwin Sr. was shopping himself around for a different job to be a lifeboat (he was), or he was too bad at recruiting to get his own kid to pick his program until it was too late to save the recruiting season.
No matter what the answer is, you jettison that coach at the end of the season. As long as the compensation for the head coach and assistant pool is strong (currently $750k base between $350k PBS and $300k assistants), and they have a clear goal for what to get out of the hire (what we hope our proposal helps define), we should be able to have the best pool of candidates since Bruce Pearl left. It might even be better than that pool because we have the facilities for the right coach to succeed.
Every year we get further away from 2016 the better. More importantly, the men's basketball practice facility is actually under construction. If the compensation proves we're serious about the program, the future should look bright.
