I’ve seen this said several times over the last few years. Is it true? This year we seem to be getting some decent players. Mark Price set us back several years but I do think that we’ve gotten closer to building a capable team this year through the portal. This needs to be the plan going forward and staying away from long term projects that never materialize before leaving.
Talent has been a big problem over the past 10+ years. Having 1-2 pretty good guys surrounded by avg and less than avg (in terms of d1 players) won’t cut it to get to the level we want to be at which is competing for at large bids to the tourney.
Coaches can put players in position to excel as a team and also do the opposite. Coaches can’t decide on one scheme they like and expect each years team to perform the exact same. That’s where coaches earn their money besides in recruiting. Winning the games against similar quality of teams a lot of times comes down to coaching.
I think coaches can mix in freshman projects with transfers. It always will come down to the attitude of the player though and their expectation of playing time as their college career progresses. At the end of the day, if you play the best players you have on your team then all else will work itself out. I don’t want the coaches playing a guy that is the 10th best player on the team over better players just to keep that player happy. Players transferring out will always happen so it’s up to the coaches to replace guys with better players. I think that can be a benefit though with misses on freshmen recruits as it opens up scholarships.
Most of the time, a JR/SR d1 transfer in player will help us win more than our FR/SO we recruited out of high school.
One more thing… it’s pretty obvious what the teams weak point is. It’s under the basket. If the coaches can’t get 2-3 quality 6’10”+ big guys to come here, we’ll always struggle to get where we want to be. And don’t tell me they all go to acc schools. We play several schools every year that aren’t acc that have tall dudes that look like they can play.
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Every school seems to come in with a bigger 4/5. I’m over watching our guys get their shots swatted back to the other side of the court by some no name because we don’t have a real post player that can hold his own.
Our 1 season with Uchebo gave us a dynamic we’d been missing, and made for a semi-competitive/scrappy season. He set conference records/kept us in games. Neither Price/Sanchez went on to make bigs a priority - and instead relied on running small ball with a bunch of average shooters. It hasn’t worked.
Hopefully we cook up something with these athletic/experienced transfers, and get some 6’10" bigs for 2022 that can play immediately.
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The talent level was good enough to win in CUSA but not to be a top 150 team. My problem with Coach Sanchez and the whole Bennet system is the style of play will keep teams with lesser talent than us in games. Case in point was the MTSU games. Shouldn’t lose to that team twice. The year UVA won the national title, that team was very talented (check NBA rosters) but played a lot of close games to teams that weren’t on their talent level.
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Win CUSA, but NOT be a top 150 team??? 
North Texas finished with a NET of #55 this season. And under the old RPI, the 2018 Middle Tennessee team was #33. (And FWIW, if RPI were still officially in use for MBB, LA Tech would have finished #23 this past season).
We had plenty of talent this year to finish in top 4. We didn’t have enough talent to take on the upper echelons of any conference above us though. The issue as stated was a system that by design creates close games and puts undue pressure on efficiency. This years team will more talented, remains to be seen if Ron can modernize the offense.
We did beat Davidson but that was definitely an outlier. Not surprised by the most of the conferences with NET numbers better than C-USA this past season because they’re the usual suspects, but seeing the Patriot and SoCon up there is different.