MBB recruiting vs. rivals

Our squad is very young and we did sign a huge class last year. I believe that Wilson and Chatman were top 100 players and MAAR, Dawkins and Doyle were more of the 3 star sleeper types. Last year's class looks like they will be solid and appears to mesh well with our system to far. My concern is, how long can we continue to recruit at a lower level than our rivals and stay competitive with them? I'm of the opinion that we need to kick it up a notch in recruiting and I have a growing concern when looking at us strike out on nearly all the blue-chips last year and this year as well. We seem to be slipping on 2016 guys like Thornton and consistently get beaten out by the big dogs in college basketball for the big fish. Michigan is a top flight school with amazing facilities and a top flight staff. Michigan has sent 5 to the NBA in the past 2 years alone with 4 being 1st rounders. Michigan has rich championship basketball tradition. So why does it seem to be such a struggle in terms of basketball recruiting? What is this staff missing on the trails?

Michigan State has Austin Grandstaff who is a 4 star...Kyle Ahrens...who we recruited and a McDonald's All American in Deyonta comings in 2015. They are also fairly young and will lose only Trice and Dawson this year. Ohio State has 4 four stars and a 5 Star wing comitted in their 2015 class alone. They will likely suffer a lot of attrition with Russell leaving early and seniors departing but still will have Tate and Bates-Diop plus this huge class. Our 2015 class is barren at the moment unless you're including the D. Robinson transfer.

There is no real excuse or reason why we do not have at least one blue chip recruit for the 2015 cycle. You cannot completely whiff on a year of recruiting as we have essentially done thus far. Basketball fortune can swing very quickly and in order to sustain the high level of play that we have enjoyed, you have to crush recruiting every year. There are no fliers to miss a year of recruits. I'm wondering if there is an issue with our staff's ability to get the blue chips. Is everyone else dirty? I think there is a legitimate concern here and it one that I think we should discuss. I don't buy the narrative that Michigan just can't recruit with the big dogs. We aren't recruiting hard enough or well enough to do it. Other smallet schools still pull blue chips annually. We should be boxing other programs out and eating first in recruiting. We shouldn't be taking a backseat to these other programs. How do we fix this?