John Calipari officially killed off the platoon system in a post to his CoachCal.com site on Tuesday, but did the platoon system already hurt Kentucky in recruiting the 2015 class?
“This last season these kids saw how they operated with the platoon system and kids got scared away,” one D-1 assistant coach at another school told SNY.tv.
This spring alone, Kentucky has missed out on a Who’s Who of elite recruits: Jaylen Brown (Cal), Cheick Diallo (Kansas), Brandon Ingram (Duke), Malik Newman (Mississippi State), Stephen Zimmerman (UNLV), Caleb Swanigan (Michigan State), Thomas Bryant (Indiana) and Antonio Blakeney (LSU). They also lost out on Shaun Kirk (N.C. State).
Each one of these players made his own decision as to what was best for him, and it’s unclear how much the platoon system — combined with negative recruiting from another schools about the platoon system — factored into their thinking about Kentucky.
“Recruiting is cyclical and personality-based,” a second D-1 assistant said. “Decisions to attend a school are very personal and what is good for one family isn’t the same for the next. In the case with Jaylen, he doesn’t like attention and Kentucky isn’t the place if you don’t like attention.”
Nick Richards added an offer from Kansas on Tuesday to go with one from UCLA.
