In Reply to: Numbers - I think Close is making a mistake, wrt that posted by TheHappyBurgermeister on June 06, 2025 at 15:49:55
she tried that last season, Burg. She brought in four frosh expecting them to take a step forward and be ready to contribute their sophomore season and start as juniors. One of them actually played a good deal at PG this past season. All four left through the transfer portal due to lack of PT and likely lack of PT next season as well due to the depth of outstanding older players ahead of them.
Maybe it works better now with that superb 2022 class becoming seniors and using up their eligibility next year.
There is also the matter of money available to pay players. First, you have to retain your best returning players. Then you need to fill major needs (outside shooting being a key and it looks like we've done well with that with a couple players, one an incoming freshman from Europe and the other the transfer from Utah. After that you need to plan for the future as you said - Sienna Betts and that Euro freshman are the start of that. And they are hard at work recruiting freshmen from the class of 2026. But we are not the richest alumni base. We're better than most, but FB lags - and it's the big dog in terms of NIL. Cronin has been working donors hard - we are competitive but are NOT at the top - just saw a report of a program with a reported $14 million base for men's BB recruiting - all the reports I've seen are around the $10 million level - competitive but once you retain your top five or six players, one $3 million player like Donovan Dent (who I think could have gotten more had he been willing to go anywhere rather than wanting to finish his college career back home at UCLA) and there really isn't a lot left.
And for women's sports - Basketball, Softball, Beach Volleyball, etc. - there just isn't a great amount of money available. Not right now anyway.
As to playing styles, if you have an Abdul-Jabbar or a Walton, I just completely disagree with your insistence - you get the ball in to the big player inside. That FORCES defenses to have to drop what they really would prefer to do and double or even triple the big player inside. What remains is taking advantage of the opportunities that opens. UConn was able to focus on taking away everyone else - conceded Lauren her 24 or 26 points and work hard to keep the other players from beating them.
This next year's squad should do a lot better in that regard. First, we will have Leger-Walker available and she and Rice will be a terrific tandem handling the ball. Then we're bringing in as noted above two dynamite three point shooters to augment the lineup. And everyone else save Londynn Jones is back and a year older. Now, after next season Lauren is gone and Sienna likely moves over to the post. At 6'4" she's a super prospect - rated the #2 player in HS last year, but that will be a different lineup and a different approach to offense.
It will make you happier to see but we'll have to wait and see if it will be better than this year's approach in which we lost only to SC - took us a couple games for the staff to figure out they couldn't play Juju like any other player around - then we beat them for the B1G championship. Only other loss all year long is to NC UConn which killed us as they did every other team in the tournament. Congrats to the Huskies but we'll see if Geno can do it again this coming year. 34-3 is a hard act to follow but I'm hoping we can be the ones to do it