There have been about a million threads. I've not really responded to many but I've read most. Thought I'd throw my thoughts out and then we can consolidate the disagreements into here.
On the case of Caleb Love, if you take 10 kids and give them a choice between North Carolina and Missouri 9.5 of them are picking North Carolina. I equate this to Odom losing half the Tiger 10 to Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC and Texas. Yeah, it sucks to lose them. But you're going to lose kids who have committable offers to those programs almost every time, regardless of who the coach is or how the program is doing. You don't have to like it, but you do kind of have to accept it. Or if you don't accept it, then you're just going to spend a lot of time being pissed off.
On the subject of local kids, Martin has recruited the state better than any coach since Norm really had it going from about 76 to 94 (after that, Norm mostly stopped getting in-state kids, particularly those from St. Louis). Cuonzo has gotten Tilmon, Pickett, Watson and McKinney out of high school and Mark Smith on the transfer rebound. That's five St. Louis area kids in three years. Oddly, he only got one of them the first time through, but he still got them so in the end it doesn't really matter how.
The counterargument is "but he was hired to lock down St. Louis." I don't think it's fair to think he will lock it down. But I do understand someone who is on the fence because he missed on Liddell, Ramey, Fletcher and Love. Mizzou is hitting about .500 in St. Louis. And that's better than anybody has done in about 25 years. The detractors will say that the one's he's landing are rated lower than the ones he's missing. And that's fair, but it also goes back to the original point that the guys he has missed have had more attractive options than the ones he has landed. So it should be assumed that your average on those kids will be lower. You don't want it to be zero, but it does make sense it will be lower. If you're going to take a step beyond "decent program that can make the tournament sometimes" you have to land some kids like that.
The other point that can't be ignored in his recruiting is that it's really hard to judge because we've yet to see the team he recruited on the floor. The best recruit in the first class never played (I mean he did, but he might as well not have and probably shouldn't have). The second best recruit in the first class never played his second season. Under normal circumstances, the start of year three, you start to get a pretty good idea of where a coach is and if he's going to succeed and you can at least start to make some reasonable judgments. You almost can't do that here because Cuonzo hasn't ever actually had the luxury of playing the team he recruited. Not in one single game. He will have that this year, which is why I'm very interested to see how good the team is this year. This year and this class, assuming reasonable health, we get to start forming some decent impressions on where he is.
The issue (not just on this issue, but on all issues) is that it's the Internet and everyone has to dig in on one extreme or the other and the more people try to convince them to change their minds, the less likely they are to do so. We have a small number of posters who believe Cuonzo is so much better than the last guy that you have to agree with everything he does and that he can do no wrong. We have a small number of posters who are convinced every time he misses on a kid that he has no clue what he is doing and is destined to fail. Neither one is true. The truth is to be determined and somewhere in the middle, but that's no fun and those who care enough to post on an Internet message board are rarely happy with playing the middle and waiting to draw conclusions.
THE REST IS MY OPINION AND A SUMMATION
As of today, I think it's pretty clear that Cuonzo has brought the program back from the depths of hell to at least respectable. I think it's pretty clear he's the best coach Missouri has had in at least a decade (those who are not Mike Anderson fans will say it's longer than that, but I think you can make an argument either way, which you can't with the two guys that followed Mike and preceded Cuonzo). I think he's got the program to a point where the NCAA Tournament on a pretty regular basis (about 3/4 years which I think should be attainable at Mizzou) is a reasonable expectation. I also think it's fair to believe that to take a step beyond that, to be a program that has a chance to win anything important, to be the guy that gets it back close to, even with or beyond where Norm had it up until 1994 (and make no mistake, that's the goal), we need to see more. Both in recruiting and on the floor. Reasonable people can have differing opinions on whether that's going to happen or not. We will start to get an answer with this season and this recruiting class. We likely won't definitively know but we should have a better idea than we do now.
On the case of Caleb Love, if you take 10 kids and give them a choice between North Carolina and Missouri 9.5 of them are picking North Carolina. I equate this to Odom losing half the Tiger 10 to Ohio State, Oklahoma, USC and Texas. Yeah, it sucks to lose them. But you're going to lose kids who have committable offers to those programs almost every time, regardless of who the coach is or how the program is doing. You don't have to like it, but you do kind of have to accept it. Or if you don't accept it, then you're just going to spend a lot of time being pissed off.
On the subject of local kids, Martin has recruited the state better than any coach since Norm really had it going from about 76 to 94 (after that, Norm mostly stopped getting in-state kids, particularly those from St. Louis). Cuonzo has gotten Tilmon, Pickett, Watson and McKinney out of high school and Mark Smith on the transfer rebound. That's five St. Louis area kids in three years. Oddly, he only got one of them the first time through, but he still got them so in the end it doesn't really matter how.
The counterargument is "but he was hired to lock down St. Louis." I don't think it's fair to think he will lock it down. But I do understand someone who is on the fence because he missed on Liddell, Ramey, Fletcher and Love. Mizzou is hitting about .500 in St. Louis. And that's better than anybody has done in about 25 years. The detractors will say that the one's he's landing are rated lower than the ones he's missing. And that's fair, but it also goes back to the original point that the guys he has missed have had more attractive options than the ones he has landed. So it should be assumed that your average on those kids will be lower. You don't want it to be zero, but it does make sense it will be lower. If you're going to take a step beyond "decent program that can make the tournament sometimes" you have to land some kids like that.
The other point that can't be ignored in his recruiting is that it's really hard to judge because we've yet to see the team he recruited on the floor. The best recruit in the first class never played (I mean he did, but he might as well not have and probably shouldn't have). The second best recruit in the first class never played his second season. Under normal circumstances, the start of year three, you start to get a pretty good idea of where a coach is and if he's going to succeed and you can at least start to make some reasonable judgments. You almost can't do that here because Cuonzo hasn't ever actually had the luxury of playing the team he recruited. Not in one single game. He will have that this year, which is why I'm very interested to see how good the team is this year. This year and this class, assuming reasonable health, we get to start forming some decent impressions on where he is.
The issue (not just on this issue, but on all issues) is that it's the Internet and everyone has to dig in on one extreme or the other and the more people try to convince them to change their minds, the less likely they are to do so. We have a small number of posters who believe Cuonzo is so much better than the last guy that you have to agree with everything he does and that he can do no wrong. We have a small number of posters who are convinced every time he misses on a kid that he has no clue what he is doing and is destined to fail. Neither one is true. The truth is to be determined and somewhere in the middle, but that's no fun and those who care enough to post on an Internet message board are rarely happy with playing the middle and waiting to draw conclusions.
THE REST IS MY OPINION AND A SUMMATION
As of today, I think it's pretty clear that Cuonzo has brought the program back from the depths of hell to at least respectable. I think it's pretty clear he's the best coach Missouri has had in at least a decade (those who are not Mike Anderson fans will say it's longer than that, but I think you can make an argument either way, which you can't with the two guys that followed Mike and preceded Cuonzo). I think he's got the program to a point where the NCAA Tournament on a pretty regular basis (about 3/4 years which I think should be attainable at Mizzou) is a reasonable expectation. I also think it's fair to believe that to take a step beyond that, to be a program that has a chance to win anything important, to be the guy that gets it back close to, even with or beyond where Norm had it up until 1994 (and make no mistake, that's the goal), we need to see more. Both in recruiting and on the floor. Reasonable people can have differing opinions on whether that's going to happen or not. We will start to get an answer with this season and this recruiting class. We likely won't definitively know but we should have a better idea than we do now.
