Just curious, why do some of you expect us to be a great basketball program?

[esplanade91]

I think we have more to offer than LSU, Bama, Ark, or A&M (facilities be damned), which aside from recent history are fringe top 25 programs pretty often. We might be in rural America but so are the Iowa schools and several other great teams... and they don't have the benefit of being RIGHT in the middle of New Orleans, Memphis, Jackson, and Birmingham.

Aside from elite talent picking schools because of the school on the jersey, I'd bet most kids pick schools based on who their teammates are going to be. It's a vicious cycle. Get a good prospect to sign, get him to ball out in year one, present him as a valuable teammate to the next year's prospects. Boom. Stans WHIFFED on everyone in retrospect but he got Stewart, Jarvis, and Bost and that's what we're going to have to do again. We need a nucleus. Stewart and Jarvis are from rural areas so I don't necessarily see us being a rural school as a negative.

I expect us to be great because I know we can be great, because we've been there fairly recently despite whatever statistic you want to throw out. We're the only SEC West team that cares about basketball. The 2010 game against UK (yeah, we lost) where I waited 7 hours in line and we took 2 NBA All-Stars to the wire is proof.