This was Campbellsville U, an NAIA team. They're a scrappy bunch to be sure. But, finding a positive in a 10 point win against that team? You're better than that.
To be clear, I'm not "finding a positive" from it.
It was a crappy effort against a bad team. But it was the first exhibition game.
I don't think it means any more than if we would have been firing on all cylinders and beaten them 100-20. It's an exhibition game.
The result either way means jack and squat when we play our first real games and even less by the time Big 12 play rolls around.
This, Hell Syracuse lost one of these not too long ago and still ended up with a 1 seed and in the sweet 16.
This exactly.
Travis Ford is similar to Quin Snyder at Missouri not too long ago. Recruits lights out, but can't really coach worth a lick. Preseason games don't matter much though.
This is a common meme that simply isn't true.
Ford has never recruited "lights out." It's a misconception that is colored by recency bias. He hit the jackpot by landing Smart and, to a much lesser extent, Nash... but outside of that, his recruiting has been about at the level of what OSU has always done.*
Look at the core players on this team outside of Smart and Nash: Markel Brown, Mike Cobbins, Brian Williams, Phil Forte... none of those guys were "big time" recruits. All of them are right in line with the kind of guys that Eddie used to bring in, and they've all developed about like what Eddie's players used to do... they were inconsistent their first two years, but grew into really nice players by their 3rd and 4th.
Markel Brown is the second-best player on the team, and he was a 3-star recruit who didn't get offers from anyone else in the Big 12. It's interesting that Ford's first real "big time" recruit - Nash - might be only the 3rd or 4th best player on this team, behind Smart obviously, and then two guys who
weren't highly recruited, but developed into very good players in Brown and Williams.
In fact, Ford's two bad teams at OSU were directly related to a
recruiting disaster -- his first full class from 2009 that was a total bust.
Obviously, Ford is responsible for recruiting those guys, but my point is that if he's such a lights-out recruiter he wouldn't have had a class that was such an unmitigated disaster that put the program in a hole for two years.
* I will admit that recruiting has picked up since we signed Smart. This year's class in particular, led by Stevie Clark, is pretty strong. Only time will tell if they will pan out, though.
