Let's take a step back here and look at the larger picture.
Four years ago, when Montgomery retired at Cal, he pleaded with the athletic administration there to hire DeCuire. They had other ideas, of course, and went for a big-name coach. And the result? Yes, they sent a #1 draft choice, Jaylen Brown, to the NBA. But four years later, that coach is gone, and Cal's Ken Pom rating was 244, versus our 72.
Furthermore, if you believe as much in Ken Pom as I do, Montana ranked higher than BYU, Oregon (with all the Nike influence), Stanford (with its national recruiting appeal), Wake Forest (alma mater to Chris Paul and Tim Duncan), Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Washington, Oregon State (Hi Tinks!), Illinois (with its access to the incredible Chicago recruiting area), New Mexico, UNLV, Colorado, Minnesota and Wyoming.
So the question for us (beyond how long we can keep him), is, How the hell is DeCuire doing it? He's recruiting to a low-level mid-major program in a rural state, and out-performing coaches making exponentially more than he is. Sure, there are the cliches ("Playing with Desperation"), but you don't perform at the level DeCuire's teams are performing with cliches, and other random coach-speak. You do it with coaching, and maybe more especially, you do it through recruiting. And while our defensive excellence was self-evident, the issues around recruiting are abundant. No matter you can't talk about Malatare and Dorsey, I would still like more answers:
Such as:
--You said some boosters had "stepped up" to support the program. What did you mean by that?
--You derisively said Montana used to recruit by phone. How has that changed?
--We know there are caps on the salaries at Montana, but are there any caps on the recruiting budget?
--Karl Nicholas was our first recruit ever from Texas. Will we continue to recruit there?
--What are the geographical areas of concentration in recruiting?
--What are the key selling points when you're recruiting a kid from Southern California?
--How much have the new training facilities aided recruiting?
--As much as we denigrate Montana as a fertile ground for recruiting, it's possible when Rollie Worster joins the program that you will have three Montana kids playing important roles on the team--Worster, Malatare and Anderson, not to mention RayQuan Evans from Billings, or the kid from Livingston that just signed with the Bobcats. Has this level of talent changed your mind about Montana kids?
--And of course, finally, can you give us any vague hints as to what's up with the three remaining scholarship openings? Are you looking at RayQuan?
I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd like to know these things.