Danny did it and went to the CBI his first year. He had two seniors (Kauri Black
+ Scottie Haralson) two juniors (Tim Peete + Pat Swilling) and one sophomore
(Smitty) The rest were Freshman. Plus, that team battled injury in the frontcourt
the entire year.
To be fair, it was in a slightly weaker conference, but you still had Memphis +
Houston and some decent teams like UTEP. And Danny was building off of
years of mediocre basketball without any NCAA appearances. Haith had two
of them to build off of.
If you mean by slightly weaker, about two full rungs weaker, then OK....
Haith's biggest recruiting mistake when he got here was hiring all of the ol'
ex-head coaches, who had rather sat by the fireplace at night with a good red
wine instead of hitting the recruiting trail....
We didn't get much real recruiting done until he got Michael Schwartz who
was responsible for some good share of the 2016 class....Sadly for us, he got
an offer for a lot more money than we could pay him.....
Haith then promoted Seals, and brought in English....It's hard to tell exactly
where we are in terms of recruiting acumen with these young coaches, but we
came very close on Vic Bailey, and signed Jefferies and Joiner for the 2017
class.....I call that pretty good recruiting...No badly need PG, but that still may
be in the works....
As to Manning, he inherited Juice, Swanny, Wright, Haralson, and Smith from
DW, and signed Black (sr. transfer), Shaq, Ray and Curtis, and very little else
during his tenure...
I had much rather have next year's squad (this year's plus Scott, Jefferies,
and Joiner, less Birt and any attrition) than anything I could envision Manning
putting on the floor.....His heart was never at T.U., and his recruiting results
seemed to show that to be true.......
