Well, the issue I see is the type of players we are bringing in. Let me explain.

When Porter was here he had a "player profile" he recruited to. Porter knew at the time he was not gonna get a 4 star player. What he did was look for was a player that had certain characteristics. These included players with high motors who had had won championships whether at the high school or JC level (transfer portal wasn't all the rage it is now). He wanted guys who knew how to win and who possessed that drive and work ethic. He also recruited to scheme. Knowing you couldn't get 4 star players he looked for skill sets. Could you play defense, could you shoot it, were you coachable. He then took those guys and he coached them hard. He was demanding and meticulous. He preached and demanded loyalty to the culture and the Culture Wall. He got the whole to play better than the parts.

In Drew, who walked into good situation and now with NIL money and the transfer portal, the array of possible talent has expanded for Loyola. We have resources to compete to go out and get a 4 star like Love and to be in the mix for players who are arguably more athletic and more skilled. This is all great, but (there's always a but) in order to capitalize on the increased resources and recent history of the program you need to be self aware as a coach. You need to know what your coaching profile is, what is your system and vision of how you want to run your program. Once you know that you have to be able to figure out what your player profile is that you want to recruit that will fit what you want to do. I think Drew, as a young coach has not completely figured this out yet. He is trying to reshape the program by becoming more up tempo and shooting more threes. I assume Drew thinks this appeals more to today's players. Which is fine, but you still need guys on the roster that can play defense, rebound, score in the paint. This current roster does not seem right now to be constructed very well. We have no true low post scorer on the roster. We do not have enough rebounders. Maybe a healthy Kymany and Amos would help that, but Amos is not a true low post scorer like Knight, Krut, Adelequen (I know I butchered his name) were.

We offer a ridiculous amount of guys every year and it's hard to figure out exactly who Drew is really targeting. Are we ending up with players who are not Drew's 1st, 2nd, or 3rd choice to fit his coach and system profile but we we just need bodies? If so, maybe we need to do a better job of recruiting by going after less "names" in the portal and at the HS level and more after guys that fit Drew's coach's profile and player profile.

Shifting gears, it's a brave world with the NIL money. College basketball has become a business and these players are not amateurs. They are paid professionals. As such it creates some unique pressures. First, if you are a coach and your school entrusts you to spend $20.5 million on players and you can't put a championship caliber team on the floor that get's into the NCAA tournament, you are gonna be on the hot seat. Schools do not like throwing money away and with basketball becoming a business, coaches are not gonna be given a massive amount of leash to fail. Second, if you are a player and you are receiving NIL money, fact is you are going to have to produce. Again, its business. Schools are not going to want to throw valuable resources away on players who are not returning on that investment. It stinks to talk about in these terms, but the players pushed for NIL and they should understand the consequences. It will be interesting to see how many transfers end up leaving more established programs due to lack of production and having to drop down to try to get, what you presume to be, lesser NIL money to keep playing. When the portal was coming vogue and players were jumping into it a vast majority were not getting takers and were out of their original programs. Schools were probably glad some of these scholarship guys left and that was before the crazy NIL money! Now, I can see schools just not reupping on the NIL money. Everyone is on a 1 year contract, coaches...may be a 2 year contract.

Lastly, I am not pleased with the start. We are far enough into the year that the newness of the players can not be used as an excuse in my mind, especially since we seem to be regressing a bit. The only thing stopping me from completely giving up on this year is not having seen Kyanmy healthy (a little bird told me he will be like this all year health wise) and Amos healthy. I will always be a 'Blers fan, but I will withhold final judgment until we get into conference play.