Lavin recruited the best available kids he could get after taking over for Norm in 2010. While they were top 100 in many circles, the group as a whole was considered
2nd or 3rd to Kentucky as I recall?
One of the problems was getting Harkless who exploded to a 1st round pick and, then waiting for Sampson who may be a NBA pick too. Hopefully not this year. Ideally, you would like to get kids like this for 2 or more years or, else it disrupts your whole scheme in team development.
Calipari, and I'm not comparing him to Lavin, is that he traditionally only recruits the 1 and done or, sometimes the 2 and done. If you do that you probably need to get top 25 talent every year. Hard for us to do..
I think it's difficult to get the highly gifted player if you're only getting them for 1 season, to build a team around. In other words maybe you're better off getting kids who will play 3-4 years and have them develop as they play.
It would have been interesting to see Harkless and Sampson together but, it didn't happen. Even for 1 year.
G'town will likely lose Porter to the NBA but, they have a pretty stellar crew coming back too..