I agree with your point about mobility and shooting but you often lose rim protection and rebounding when young players are more focused on those skills than being tough down low. Maybe what Boals needs to do is sacrifice shooting/extending the floor in favor of getting bruisers in the paint on both sides of the court.
You can't reach the NBA by being exclusively a back to the basket kind of player. Young players model their game off the people at the top. Everyone is trying to stretch the floor and wants to put up shots from deep.
That's why Boals recruits the way he does. Clayton/Evans/Hadaway are all in that mold because that's what young players want to be and they were all 3 star recruits for that reason.
You're the second person to suggest that Evans is in that mold. Is he a shooter? I just watched as many highlight videos as I could find, and none of them involved touches outside. They're just short clips from last year though, and may not be comprehensive. I would have thought Evans' best case is more of a Jon Smith/Flomo type. Not a big body, but long enough to rebound and change shots.
Sure, you can still find traditional centers but there's not a ton of them out there and the ones available at the mid-major level are typically raw and need more time to develop. Wiz was once high regarded. The miss rate on centers at our level is really high.
This is definitely true. Agree with you here. A guy who is 6'11 is basically a top 100 recruit, and it means nothing.
What I'd like to see is more big bodies, even if those bodies aren't that tall. Texas State wasn't a tall team, but they were much stronger than us. I think we're going to continue to struggle despite our talent for basically as long as we all have to pretend that Aiden Hadaway is a "big." He was a wing in high school and recruited as a wing. He's not quite skilled enough as a wing, so we have him playing up a position.
We definitely need more balance in that regard but would you rather recruit lesser players just because they're marginally better in the paint? What Boals needs to do better is develop his big men better and develop a tougher mentality down low. It doesn't need to just be fixed by recruiting. Coaching plays a role too.
It feels like a false premise to suggest that my stance is we need to recruit lesser players. But we seem to consistently load up on wings and guards, and plenty of them don't hit. Last year, Cornish was basically a wasted roster spot. Ben Nicol hasn't played a minute. Burris is injured, but in that same wing mold. Our recruiting class next year includes two small forwards and two shooting guards.
I get we're not gonna get the 7 footer unless he's a project. But we need more strength. It doesn't have to be a blue chip guy, and he doesn't have to be particularly talented. But somebody who can protect the paint and rebound at this point's far preferable to another 6'7 (in recruiting world, but actually 6'4) wing who is 180lbs.
The team has had the exact same deficit for 2 seasons now. Just hoping Boals acknowledges that, and this isn't just a symptom of Boals ball.