Wow, you try to use facts and flat out lie to come up with that argument? Let's see.. when CPJ retired we were #50 in talent composite. We were in lower 25th percentile, that much is correct. So you say that is not at the bottom... well let's take a look at the teams below us. There are 65 P5 teams. We were #50 (everyone above us was a P5 team). So below us you had Syracuse, Arizona, Iowa State, Washington State, Indiana, Texas Tech, Illinois, Rutgers, Virginia, Kansas State, Oregon State, Boston College, Wake Forest, Purdue, and Kansas. If those are the only P5 teams we had more talent than, then yeah I'd say that's pretty near the bottom. Our average player rating (83.84) was closer to that of Wake Forest at #70 (82.87) than Michigan State at #30 (86.09). And then you say Collins has "modestly" improved the talent to "about 40th." We went up to 45 in 2019, to 34 in 2020, to 33 in 2021. 2022 is not out yet but should be around the same. We are at #33 in 2021 with an average player rating of 86.72. Ahead of teams like Maryland, NC State, Pitt, Michigan State, Cal, VT, Baylor, Iowa, Minnesota, etc. There is more talent on every team now also than there was back then too, so if you took CPJ's last team from 2018, they would be down around #66 in 2021 and vice versa, you move the 2021 class back to 2018 and they would be #26. So yes there is much more talent on the team now than then. That is a tremendous difference. The 2021 team had 16 4-stars and 69 3-stars while the 2018 team had only 4 4-stars and 73 3-stars. By the way, 2018 also wasn't just a down year or an anomaly for CPJ, it was pretty much on average for him. 2015-2017 team talent composite ranked 49, 50, and 54.
This staff started out hot in recruiting but the inability to put the wins on the board have stalled that out. Nobody is arguing that. The coaching HAS to get better or a change will need to be made. That said, if the coaching staff can get it together with these new hires and start putting up some W's, the recruiting will pick back up again and we will be even better. But to say that the team is currently not in any better shape than it was when CPJ left is an absolute joke.