A Sea Of Blue, a Kentucky Wildcats community

Josh Selby was declared eligible part of the way through the season and the Kansas offense and defense have played worse since he joined the team. The Pomeroy rankings currently have Kansas 3rd nationally, but with Selby they have looked more like the 7th best team in the country. Now, you can argue that Kansas was never really tested before Selby showed up, but I don’t think that is fair. Selby currently has a terrible assist to turnover ratio and has struggled with his two point field goal shooting. I fully expect Selby to get better, but so far Kansas has not played better with him on the floor.

"We sent recruiting mail out in color on plain white paper," McCaffery said. "If it was on letterhead it would have been legal. If it was in black and white on plain white paper it would have been legal. But since it was in color on plain white paper it was a violation and we self-reported. So that’s the extent of my transgressions with the NCAA, but it gives you an idea of what we deal with. We called it the ‘Color Paper Caper.’"

Once you control for the other factors impacting the team (players leaving, player development), you do get a positive impact from top 10 recruits. But on average, it is not nearly as large as most people expect.

There are two problems here. First, there are top 10 recruits that were simply disappointing. (Think John Henson for North Carolina or Lance Stephenson for Cincinnati last year.)

Second, consider the alternative. If a top 10 recruit did not show up, they would not necessarily be replaced by a player with a 75.9 ORtg. Top 10 recruits tend to go to programs that have pretty good alternatives. For a quality team like Duke in 2008, what would have happened if there was no Kyle Singler? Well, Taylor King, Nolan Smith, or Brian Zoubek might have earned more playing time. And while Coach K clearly had his reasons for limiting those player’s minutes in 2008, they were all very effective when on the court. In other words, we have a value over replacement player (VORP) issue. For super talented teams, adding a top 10 recruit usually takes playing time away from other very talented players.

"He [William Wesley] has nothing to do with my son," Witherspoon said after watching Selby in the adidas Super 64 with the Baltimore Assault team. "They have never had lunch together, he's never called my son's phone. He has nothing to do with us."