Question

[WhitePhantoms]

I was sitting here just looking at previous recruiting classes and I've always wondered why did we take the Wear Twins in the 2009 class?
To me that never made any sense. We had senior Deon Thompson, sophomore Ed Davis, sophomore Tyler Zeller and Henson committed. I mean I could have understood taking just one more big because you were definitely losing Deon to graduation and Ed Davis had the chance of leaving early, which he did, but having 6 bigs is never ideal unless some are walk ons and not expected to contribute.

Also were Henson, Strickland, McDonald and the Wear twins the only prospects we offered in the 2009 class? And were Barnes, Bullock and Kendall the only prospects we offered in the 2010 class?

 

[JakeSarna]

I was sitting here just looking at previous recruiting classes and I've always wondered why did we take the Wear Twins in the 2009 class?
To me that never made any sense. We had senior Deon Thompson, sophomore Ed Davis, sophomore Tyler Zeller and Henson committed. I mean I could have understood taking just one more big because you were definitely losing Deon to graduation and Ed Davis had the chance of leaving early, which he did, but having 6 bigs is never ideal unless some are walk ons and not expected to contribute.

Also were Henson, Strickland, McDonald and the Wear twins the only prospects we offered in the 2009 class? And were Barnes, Bullock and Kendall the only prospects we offered in the 2010 class?

Yes...I remember that to be the fact but went to double check the offers we made in 2009 and 2010 and those commits were the only ones offered which is pretty incredible imo. (Then again D00k also only offered 2 players in 2009, Ryan Kelly and Miles Plumlee...those were the days when most of D00ks top recruits were pasty white boys...obviously before Kyrie committed in 2010 and then Capel coming back to d00k)

As to the reason why Roy offered the Wear twins, I don't know, but they were highly ranked coming out of high school. And if I remember correctly, that was the end of Roy's pipeline into California from his Kansas days.

 

[TPFKAPFS]

IIRC we really only wanted one, but the deal was both or neither. With the idea that Roy would play a deep bench, the promise was everyone that earned it would get pt. They balked at the "earning it" part and then punked out and went crying home to daddy. One would have been featured the next year when we were not going to see such a glut, but they and their peeps thought a little too highly about their level of skill. (honestly can't remember which could actually play)

 

[DSouthr]

Well, because those twins were considered big time talents. WE had Henson coming in but he was wanting to be more a wing than a 4 and was strongly thinking he could be 1&D , Zeller was there but was hurt most of his frosh season and that could have been a chronic thing, as you offer Deon was a senior. IT was pretty well known that Davis was leaving after his soph season and watching him as a soph it may have been for the best had he gone after his frosh season because he was involved in some chemistry issues that soph season, there was no way he was going to be a Jr for us.

Those twins were a big time get, the problem was one of them wanted to play for us and the other wanted to play for, maybe it was UCLA when he was being recruited. They were always going to be a package deal. When the 1 got that nasty season ending injury I think the family decided they needed to be closer to home and both had expressed big time home sick prior, as many frosh from the west coast do. It was very important to the twins that they play their entire college career together and the thinking was the kid that got hurt may have had to sit out the next season recovering so why not transfer and both would have to sit out but their career woudl stay in sync. So it didn't end well and as I mentioned, the chemistry on that team was already strained big time, it kinda set the stage for what happened. I actually think they could have become big time players for us had they stayed, I was impressed with what I saw from both as freshmen.