No once again what I said just went WHOOOOOOSH right over your head.
The fab 5 showed that Basketball can be played by freshmen players at the highest level.
To continue this point to show you that what happened with them wasn't an anomaly, but where the sport was heading at the collegiate level.
Who do you think is a a great basketball program? Duke? Kentucky?
Golly I bet they have lots of seniors...
Oh wait... they don't.
And you have people like Omari Spellman who played 1 and done at Villanova won the championship and was a 1st round pick by the Hawks.
Kid was a 1st round pick playing his freshmen year and is drafted after winning the championship.
THAT IS THE COLLEGE BASKETBALL CLIMATE TODAY.
It's not some 4 year we are going to school to go to school thing for those athletes.
It's an I'll give you a year or maybe 2 at most by the good players.
So given that type of climate it is an absolute must to hire someone who can win and win immediately with talent in almost a pick up game scenario because you only gonna have the talent for 2 years.
When I referenced the Fab 5 I that was when college basketball changed. And it changed in a big big way.
You have the Lebrons, Kobes, etc. who can come right out of highschool so what is the incentive to go to WSU for them, or any of the top tier talent?
None. There is ZERO incentive to come play at WSU, because they are of a mindset of if I am going to play basketball it'll be for 1-2 years tops and I want to compete at a high level.
So for WSU to caputre those player they have to go WITH the current instead of against it, which means short term evaluation of coaches going after agressive young ones trying to make a name for themselves.
Which absolutely matches the mindset of the top tier talent. Young aggressive players wanting to make a name for themselves chasing a buck.
You match that up and you will see WSU basketball turn around in a big way.
Coach I am only going to play for two years. Great I only have a contract for 3 so let's do this kids grab this guy and this guy and let's go have some fun.
Everybody in basketball is chasing a bigger better deal. Everybody. The players, the coaches. This let's pay this guy 1.5 million and after 4 years we will evaluate does not match the mindset of college basketball.
Football it's different. Basketball it is basically organized pickup games for two years, and if you aren't modeling the program to excel in that arena you are wasting money and time.
You can fantasize about the Fab 5 all you want but there is no frickin' way that you can reasonably suggest that the best plan for building a program is to hope that some cheap young coach from a small college is going to magically draw in all the elite talent because they think he's cool. Duke and Kentucky are more likely to have guys leaving early so hell yes, they are young. But they get 2-3 players every year that WSU is lucky to get once every 10-15 years.
I don't disagree with your premise that college basketball players have a different mindset than football players and I agree that a football team takes time to develop just because of the more intense physical requirements and the difficulty of getting 22 guys that can play cohesively vs 5 for basketball. You are absolutely right on that.
The suggestion about going cheap, young and cool with the hopes that they are going to land elite talent ahead of the basketball powers of the world is just a fantasy. I don't think we need to find another retread like Ernie Kent, and I think we should look at some of the young guys you suggested, but it's foolish to think that a top level talent is going to pick WSU with a no name $600k coach over any school with a heartbeat today. Ernie needs to go, and we may go with a young coach, but it's going to be a 3-4 year project again. Anyone who thinks otherwise is dreaming. We need another coach like Bennett who gets guys to believe in a system and commit to playing it. We need a guy like Gregg Marshall who's done the same thing at Wichita State. He had the Shockers winning 25 games without NBA talent and made it to the Final Four after he finally started getting that talent and developing it......6 years in. And it took him three years to get his first decent team built. There are cases where young guys make a huge impact immediately, but that doesn't usually happen at a place like WSU.