Gave it a C, went the way I thought it would. In the offseason with the new free transfer rule and even how the portal went the year before, when it became clear after the NW home loss last year that Pitino was finished, my biggest fear for the next coach was going to be a mass exodus of players, sure they may like the new coach, but when you can move consequence free, it's like being an employee and you get a new boss, it may turn out alright, but you're going to have change thrusted upon you, you're going to want as much control as possible of the end result and put yourself in the best situation for yourself. The exodus turned out even worse than i thought it would, I never imagine Gabe would leave and I thought Gach and Johnson would stick it out another year as well. Carr never thought he'd play college again, Robbins and Mashburn didn't shock me and quite frankly I didn't care what Mitchell, Freeman or Tre Williams did.
I actually liked most of the moves in the portal, Ogele, and Daniels were desperation moves, but I thought Sutherlin was a pleasant surprise, thought he would be a deep reserve, perhaps Ben did too. But I thought Battle, Fox Willis, Loewe and Stephens was a nice haul, if you get five guys like that to join a core in place, lets just say for example of core of Robbins, Gach, Gabe, Johnson, Ihnen, Curry and Thompson, throw in Sutherlin and that's a good 13 man roster and you're competing for a tourney birth, however that obviously didn't happen. I'll put about 10% Ben for the roster turnover, obviously had a chance to re recruit some guys, but when you can move around consequence free, I'm not going to blame Ben for guys looking out for themselves, if Jackson-Davis declares, I think it would have all fallen apart at IU, so kudos for Woodson for convincing his star to stay.
As for the season when the schedule came out I thought we would go 7-3 in non con and 5-15 in big ten play. for 12-18 record. We went 9-0 and 4-16 13-16. Probably go 14-16 if Alcorn State game is played. Record wise, would up a smidge better overall a smidge worse in league play, too bad we didn't have Curry in the Iowa and Ohio State home losses, but the Rutgers win was special and will find out in a few hours with Michigan, but with that win Ben Johnson, did something his coach never did in seven years and some change, beat an NCAA team on the road. On another note, it was nice to see A&M CC, Alcorn State, Princeton, Jacksonville and Fort Wayne all make runs to the semis and finals of their conference tournaments. Kansas City believed tied for third in the Summit regular season.
Recruiting sucked to lose out on Tre and Pierre, but I think Carrington was a nice get. And the staff did a good job of building relationships with Payne and JOJ, as they were late bloomers and really blew up over summer, especially Payne, there recruitments reminded me of Macura in 2014 Tschetter last year and to a lesser extent Reuvers in 2017, it was nice to see Ben Johnson and Dave Thorson put in the work on those guys when Pitino probably would have ignored them.
All in all I like the freshman class coming in, looking at the all big ten teams, and whose probably leaving, I think Battle could have a shot at Preseason all Big Ten, a great building block to have. Sounds like we are sitting well with our top 2023 targets and I'm excited to see what we get in the portal. If we recruit well, I think by year three Ben will have a nucleus that can make a run as upperclassmen and will probably know by Twins opening day what we will have in the portal to determine what next year will look like, but no sense in putting the cart before the horse on that, somethings need to happen before the delusions of grandeur start to set in.
