It's quite the opposite. Just because I questioned the talent level on the team doesn't mean I believe Lavin isn't a good recruiter
That's what we pundits call cognitive dissonance: the ability to believe at once two things that contradict each other. So on the one hand you say Steve Lavin is a tremendous recruiter, and on the other that the players he recruits "[lack the] ability to either shoot, dribble, or pass" and are too stupid to learn how to do so. From my POV any categorization of Lavin's recruiting would depend on the type of the player he brought in. If the players are skilled at shooting, dribbling and passing, then Lavin is a good recruiter. If they suck at basketball, he sucks at recruiting. You believe that Lavin is a good recruiter and that the players he bring in are awful and unskilled.
or I believe he is a tremendous coach. He is a top notch recruiter who was off the recruiting trail for 7 years, came in and brought in the best players with the highest ceilings he could. As he is able to build relationships he will bring in better talent. Could a better coach get more out of them than Lavin? Absolutely. But would a better coach be able to bring in the talent?
What talent? The talent of the players who can't pass shoot or dribble? I'd think anyone could recruit players who lack rudimetary basketball skills and that players who lack such skills would benefit from "a better coach than Lavin," that is, one who "could get more out of them."
Maybe if your at Duke, Kansas, UCLA, etc. etc. But at SJU? I don't know that. Case in point.....Jarvis is a really good coach, did well with another coaches players, horrible recruiter, we saw how that story ended.
Mike Jarvis is an awful atrocious coach and a repulsive human being. His coaching record since 2000 - not counting 50 vacated games - is 80 wins and 133 losses. He's 67-90 at Florida Atlantic. There is no metric by which is is a really good coach, a good coach, or even a mediocre coach. Mike Jarvis sucks at coaching.
I never held the position that Lavin is a great coach, my position has always been that the players are not as good as the pundits make them out to be. But I believe they will get better, Sampson will get better. Lavin will bring in better players and we will be successful not because Lavin in a great coach, but a great recruiter. The team is improving, slowly, but we are. 5-6 years ago we were losing consistanly to Mid major teams. Now we lose to quality teams, and beat those same teams we would have lost to 5 years ago. Its a process that I am more than patient to watch unfold.
I would not argue that head coach Steve Lavin is not an improvement on Norm Roberts. Nor would anyone with a functioning cerebral cortex. He's the best thing to happen to SJ BB since Lou retired. But that doesn't mean he can coach. He can't. He sucks at game coaching. He sucks at strategy. He sucks at personnel management. And - if Steve Lavin is to be believed - he sucks at motivating his players, which is why he resorts to benching them in favor of his walk ons. He is however to my mind a superior recruiter: he's a chef who's assembled a pantry full of delicious fresh ingredients but can't figure out how to turn on the stove.
I do though find it passing strange that the line in the sand Lavin loyalists draw is that he's an improvement on Norm Roberts, the worst in Big East history. We're losing to better teams is to me a strange metric of success. Maybe in year 5 we'll lose to these better teams by fewer points. Baby steps.