Evaluating progress

Thank you for your cogent response. I disagree. Champagnie certainly has been better than advertised. Posh plays like a freshman PG, albeit he's capable of overwhelming lesser competition. Hsususu you must be grading on potential. He's been better than advertised and I think he'll be a good four year players but currently he's still a project. Assuming arguendo that these players are playing better than their rankings, it'd be difficult to point to more than a handful of teams that have had sustained success with that model, ie coaching up under the radar players. That's why almost all coaches everywhere strive to get the highest rated players possible and why there's an entire industry devoted to identifying and ranking those players.

Of the three teams you mention, two were coached by certified wunderkind - Brad Stevens and Chris Mack - and the third by Doug McDermott's father, who's for my money the best coach in the league and who over the past five years has coached recruited eight top-100 players: Harrell, Patton, Ballock, Alexander, Epperson, Joseph, O'Connell and someone called Rati Andronikashvili.

Whereas Coach Home Run is far from a wunderkind. He's an old man who's never won anything of significance and has managed a Lou-esque three NCAA tournament wins this decade. He's to my mind at the top of the bottom tier of coaches in the league, above Laetio and Ewing and on about a par with Travis Steele - who's recruited Bluiett, Goodin, Marshall, Scruggs, Tandy, Odom, all top-100 players - and floor slapping dope Wojowosksky, who's an idiot but he's a pretty good recruiter, or at least his boosters are. I don't see how Iron Mike's fabulous system suddenly translates to success, especially at the black hole of coaching that comprises the gym on Utopia Parkway. As usual, YMMV