LV renaissance
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- Feb 3, 2021
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I am supportive of Coach Harper and hope she continues to turn our program around. One remaining question about her that has been frequently addressed on this forum has been how good she can be as a recruiter. It may take more time to get the answer for this question, though I have hope that she will eventually flourish here. The other question I still have is that her first two teams she had here peaked early in the season and then slightly regressed after that. This is precisely not the trend you need for the NCAAs and the opposite of what Pat's teams did. There was a stretch in January last year that they looked like a potential Elite Eight team or better. We stomped three really good teams by double digits- Arkansas, Kentucky, and Alabama, and even the meltdown with Georgia happened after one of the best halves of basketball I have seen the LV play since Pat was at the helm. Think if that team kept on improving from there. Instead, our wins became less impressive and we barely won over some average teams. The one change that occurred at the time was that Marta was injured. I like Marta and think she has potential, but I am not sure she was so good that her injury should have changed the season trajectory so much. One possibility was that after Marta was injured, we literally had hardly any quality depth, which could have also been a factor for why we somewhat faded in the first year too. In any case, this year we should have quality depth and it is time for us to peak in March, not January!