It's not passing on Naclerio that did Norm in, it was passing on everyone. At the time, NYC may not have been producing a dozen lottery picks, but Norm lost a lot of players from the city that we needed. Just about everyone. The only one he landed was Hardy, and Norm didn't even know what he had.
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Not to defend Norm, but Burrell was a good get (and would have been better with a different staff for four years), and from what everyone says Rob Thomas pre-injury was a legitimate top recruit. Omari also got recruited by some big boys but apparently got out of shape and was never the player everyone thought he might be. The problem with Norm was not only did he not get enough of the good NYC players (or the top ones, as we have done recently with Harkless and Obekpa), but he didn't compensate that loss by getting highly ranked guys from outside NYC.
In their high school rankings yes, but Norm's eye for talent and judgement overall was horrible. Yes, Hardy, Burrell, DJ and Brownlee all went out on a positive note, but they were basically 6 years in. Ricky Torres was a fringe top 100 prospect. He was barely a D1 player. As was Ryan Williams.
Norms biggest downfall was not recruiting Charles Jenkins every basketball circle around the area says it till this day, if he would have did that norm might still have a job at SJU.... I mean to say he did recruit Charles but didn't pursue him strong enough and instead put all his eggs in the Malcolm grant basket. And we see how that turned out.
Charles Jenkins, Michael Glover, Darryl Bryant, Scott Machado.
He probably could have had all of those guys. Imagine a starting 5 of Machado, Hardy, Jenkins, Glover and DJ.