My point is that the expectation was that CMA was brought in to focus on national, not local recruiting.
Who's expectations were those exactly? Yours? Because I didn't hear anyone say - and that's not an exaggeration, not anyone - say let's bring CMA in here to focus on national recruiting. What I heard was let's get CMA in here because the first three guys said no and otherwise we're going to end up with that mook from Yale or someone worse.
This latest recruit is sending a message to every local high school coach: Watch how this kid improves.
I suppose if he improves that might be the message and if so it might pay dividends in 2024 when that becomes apparent and if so then what? We might land some other coveted three star recruits who are almost as good as their brothers I guess. The fact is though that most players improve over four years, if only through attrition. That's kind of the entire theory of pedagogy: that continued exposure to a particular subject results in a degree of expertise in that subject no matter how incompetent the teacher or ignorant the pupil.
When coach third choice was hired I went over to the Arkansas board and read the thread about his firing. Sentiments ran from jubilation to he's a good guy and our guy but he had to go: they said his players don't improve, that his in game coaching stinks, that the roster was unbalanced and instable due to multitudinous transfers, that he runs a fugazi system that beats up on cupcakes but doesn't work in the long run against real competition and especially in the post season. It sounded almost exactly like disgruntled fans here describing Mullin. Hopefully all those guys who watched him coach for eight years are wrong and his ball washers here who have never seen him coach a game are right. But having been a SJ fan for 40 years I'm not optimistic about the prospects for success.