[TheFarm07]

I feel like everybody has an inflated view of what recruits we have gotten in the past.  We did have Haley Jones and Brink back to back.  But beyond that, our top ten recruits have been relatively few for many years prior to that.  In the past 25 years or so (just thinking of the time since I was on campus), we have had Nicole Powell, Jayne Appel, the Ogwumike sisters, and Wiggins.  Oh, and Yamasaki if stretching all the way back to 2000 (or was she 99?).  And then add in Haley Jones and Brink in the 2020s.  But for the period between 2000 and 2020, I feel like those were our only top 10 recruits.  I could be missing some perhaps, but off the top of my head those were the top 10 recruits we got over a 20 year period between 2000 and 2020-- 6 in 20 years.  So, it's not like we used to be getting top 10 recruits every year or even every other year -- Haley Jones and Brink back to back were an anomaly.  We have two coming in this year in Swain (#5 in Prospects Nation) and Somfai (#2 in ASGR), which is the best we have had in a single year in the past 25 years -- and yet many people seem to be acting like we are in an abnormal drought.

Edit:  Forgot Demetre and Kianna Williams in there, but again both a bit more recent.

Believe me, I haven't misremembered our recruiting history. I can still recall the surprised disappointment in the post-Ogwumike years of the mid-2010s when I thought we would have been able to translate our run of 5 straight Final Fours into brobdingnagian recruiting hauls but it took about a decade to bring in our first #1 recruit since Chiney.

But a fan can still hope (maybe foolishly) that we can do even better in the future, hope that Kate would set that as a goal for herself, to not only continue but perhaps exceed what her predecessor and mentor accomplished. Because what I do know is that the periods of our most success over the last 20 years (late 2000s-early 2010s) and a decade later (late 2010s-early 2020s) coincided with multiple elite recruits (Candice, Appel, Pederson, Pohlen and the Ogwumike sisters and then Kiana, Haley, Lexie, Brink) all playing on the same team together.

[TheFarm07]

I feel like everybody has an inflated view of what recruits we have gotten in the past.  We did have Haley Jones and Brink back to back.  But beyond that, our top ten recruits have been relatively few for many years prior to that.  In the past 25 years or so (just thinking of the time since I was on campus), we have had Nicole Powell, Jayne Appel, the Ogwumike sisters, and Wiggins.  Oh, and Yamasaki if stretching all the way back to 2000 (or was she 99?).  And then add in Haley Jones and Brink in the 2020s.  But for the period between 2000 and 2020, I feel like those were our only top 10 recruits.  I could be missing some perhaps, but off the top of my head those were the top 10 recruits we got over a 20 year period between 2000 and 2020-- 6 in 20 years.  So, it's not like we used to be getting top 10 recruits every year or even every other year -- Haley Jones and Brink back to back were an anomaly.  We have two coming in this year in Swain (#5 in Prospects Nation) and Somfai (#2 in ASGR), which is the best we have had in a single year in the past 25 years -- and yet many people seem to be acting like we are in an abnormal drought.

Edit:  Forgot Demetre and Kianna Williams in there, but again both a bit more recent.

Believe me, I haven't misremembered our recruiting history. I can still recall the surprised disappointment in the post-Ogwumike years of the mid-2010s when I thought we would have been able to translate our run of 5 straight Final Fours into brobdingnagian recruiting hauls but it took about a decade to bring in our first #1 recruit since Chiney.

But a fan can still hope (maybe foolishly) that we can do even better in the future, hope that Kate would set that as a goal for herself, to not only continue but perhaps exceed what her predecessor and mentor accomplished. Because what I do know is that the periods of our most success over the last 20 years (late 2000s-early 2010s) and a decade later (late 2010s-early 2020s) coincided with multiple elite recruits (Candice, Appel, Pederson, Pohlen and the Ogwumike sisters and then Kiana, Haley, Lexie, Brink) all playing on the same team together.