The NCAA elite teams recruit All-American talent that goes to the NBA
If you recruit a "four-year player", you might as well refer to them as "not quite NBA material". Like a smoking hot girfriend vs. a girl who is, well, she's "nice". I'll take the Eric Gordon's, Isiah Thomas All-Americans that may or may not finish 4 years of college to compete for a National Title, over their roster full of "nice".
At every level you almoist always need a player who can "excel" at the next level to win a title or compete at the highest level. For example in AAU ball or Middle Shool age you need players who will be good at the HS level, to compete for a state title you need players who have the talent to play and excel in NCAA college basketball. To win a NCAA title you need players who will play and excel in the NBA. To win an NBA Title you need NBA All-Star or Olympic Team players. That is the natural progression. PU has recruited a good class for them, partly because the stars were aligned just right, Keady left the cupboard bare at PU, Knight was gone and MD was clueless and ineffective at consistenly recruiting in-state Indiana talent and nobody knew how long MD was going to be at IU. So Painter had a head start on the incoming PU recruits and also had immediate playing time available due to the major downslide in the PU program. Playing time in the Big 10 and close to home was an attractive option for the PU recruits when given the big PU sell from Painter. But also feeding the PU recruits with anti-IU hatred and jealousy seems to have continued with PU recruit Martin making the comments that he did about "Gordon is not God", about his own Indiana All-Star teammate, which is a disgraceful comment to make about your own All-Star teammate who just happens to be one of the top two players in the nation. A little jealousy perhaps?. I'm surprised the PU recruits didn't take masking tape to the Indiana letters across the chest of their Indiana HS All-Star uniforms and put P.U. in it's place. PU supporters always seem to have the chip on their shoulder and an inferiority complex when comparing themselves to IU. Unless the top NCAA programs want to stop recruiting All-Americans that only go to college for one year or less than four years before turning pro and going to the NBA, and likely into the NBA Lottery, to please the PU faithful (and their four-year players, then IU needs to keep recruting the high level talent like an Eric Gordon to also compete at the highest level, because it takes this level of player to win a title in most cases. PU will get better (can't get much worse)and play their more mature 22 year old (four-year player) Seniors against 18 and 19 year old higher talent, and compete but never quite make it to the top. So Abu-gabby (sounds like something my 1 year old niece would say after spitting out a big blob of oatmeal) needs to stick to his own PU web board, rather than flame on our board. IU has always had better talent than PU throughout the years, and it will now continue with Coach Sampson at IU. Order has been restored in the basketball universe, and Abugabby don't like it. Go back to your own board if you don't like the truth.
