Loved watching him play here, love watching him win NBA championships

bobinator said:

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What's fun about Caruso is there's two levels of people feeling vindicated. The one that gets brought up all the time here is the debate about his future in the NBA, but I think that's overshadowed what was a really fascinating debate for a long time about his potential even as a college player.

The Turgeon staff took a really long time to come around on Caruso even when other schools started to jump in on him.

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Any idea why that was? Had their mind made up on him prematurely since they saw him too much?

There were a lot of factors. For one, for several years, they already had Jamal Branch committed for the 2011 class, and J-Mychal Reese was one of the top point guards for the 2012 class and everyone liked him more for most of the way coming up. So did they want to take three point guards, none of which were projected as particularly good scorers?

Second, Caruso was a late bloomer as a prospect. He was a good player early in high school but he definitely didn't project as a high major player until really the summer after his junior season. In June of 2011 Caruso was only holding offers from like Sam and maybe a couple of other D1 programs and by that fall he was being offered by all kinds of people including Colorado and Creighton. Reese committed to A&M in July of 2011.

He also didn't exactly play for a high profile travel team so he didn't show up at a lot of the same events as the really highly rated players, the EYBL tournaments and that sort of thing. It wasn't very often you got to see him face other elite players, but that's part of why he suddenly blew up that summer was his performance in some camps and his team did show up to a few high profile tournaments.

And to be fair, Caruso was a hard player to project. How many 6-5 point guards are out there and he wasn't a very good shooter. But my theory has always been that if a local kid is borderline you should go ahead and take him.

You should get the local white kid just to annoy MM. if he stays in the bench so what??? Always requisition a lunch pail for those guys too!!!