I know it's easy to say but if we just kept minnesotas best we would be a national title contender every year
We could be contenders starting in 2014-15 maybe, and that's assuming that Tyus Jones and Rashad Vaughn didn't enter the draft after their one hypothetical year with the Gophers. Jarvis Johnson was a 4 star at one point before dropping out of the top 150 entirely, Illikainen really hasn't done anything. Coffey is great, Michael Hurt hasn't shown too much yet, but he's just a freshman, same with Reed Nikko. From what I can tell, Brock Bertram is redshirting at Buffalo. Joey King could have possibly thrived as a third or fourth option on offense.
If we had gotten all the in-state recruits we wanted, I think Coffey, Travis, and Lynch would be the local stars, maybe Johnson if he were able to play. It seems, like, for the team we just had, Reid Travis would be the only major addition. But then the 2014-15 team could have actually been pretty darn good with Tyus, Rashad, and Reid, given that I personally think they were already a decent team that underachieved, and that could have had a positive effect on out-of-state recruiting in future years.
I'm reluctant to say we'd be great every year because Tubby got most of the best Minnesota players and we were never really better than 'pretty good,' though admittedly Royce White never playing likely hurt Tubby's tenure quite a bit. An inside tandem of Royce White and Trevor Mbakwe would have made Hoffarber even more deadly from the outside. The in-state talent just wasn't great from 2010-2013. I think Joe Coleman was the only top 150 recruit in those 4 years. Even the 2017 and 2018 classes, while fairly deep, don't have much in the way of surefire NBA talent, which I think you need some of to get the Final Four. There's Gary Trent, but I think he's only lived in Minnesota for a few years, and is currently playing out of state, so I'd guess he's less likely than most in-state recruits to have an inherent desire to represent Minnesota. Then there's the matter of whether you have the free scholarships to take all the guys you want. We have 5 Minnesota guys playing high major ball starting in 2017, and we only had 2 open scholarships.
I think we'd have a nice collection of good to great role players, but I question if we would have been able to get that NBA-level talent who can take over a game and will the team to victory. Coffey could become that guy I think, and Trent could maybe do it for one year before leaving. Just trying to plot out more explicitly how the scenario might play out.
