In Reply to: The team was stacked with seniors - wouldn’t the worst case posted by LakerFanForLebronNotKobe on April 15, 2026 at 16:46:24
"assuming that next group of seniors should it be done like this, would also have to match the quality/talent, not be hit with injuries, etc."
That's the difficult part. Last year we had 4 of the top 6 recruits in the junior class and couldn't get it done.
We were fortunate to land Kiki, fortunate that Gabriela developed into such a stud, fortunate that things went poorly for Lauren at Stanford and we could land her, fortunate to get Angela in the portal and fortunate that she grew up from being a single digit scorer, and low single digit rebounder when she arrived, fortunate to land Kneepkens - from what I've read, Staley was after her hard, and fortunate that after Charlisse graduated from Wazzoo she wanted to play somewhere else and did her knee so she ended up a senior this season, and fortunate the Lauren has a little sister that was the 2nd ranked recruit in her class.
We'll see if Close can duplicate the good fortune she had in putting this class together and doing an outstanding job developing it. Every one of these players, except Charlisse, who wasn't here long, grew immensely while at UCLA.
If it was just a matter of "let's get 6 seniors on a team" everyone would be trying to get 6 seniors.