the great montana basketball legacy that was started by jud heathcote, and continued through jim brandenburg, mike montgomery and stew morrill, really hit the dumper under blaine taylor, and it all began with one bum recruiting class--don carter, the seven footer from oregon and a kid from las vegas (both of whom left the program completely) plus dominique davis, a project who never really fulfilled his potential. it had been our tradition to recruit mostly high school kids and give them a redshirt year, assuring a steady flow of mature talent, but this one bad class created a huge hole in the program that we basically tried to plug with jaycee transfers, and that's when the basketball program began its slide.
it came back briefly, thanks to pat kennedy's recruiting and krysko's coaching, but hit another bad stretch because of bum recruiting--vandejagt, van vliet, swift and rundles. you just can't make that many recruiting mistakes in such a short period of time and sustain the excellence of your program.
has tinks corrected all this? i believe he has. and i believe he's got it back to the point we can base our recruiting on high school seniors, and fill in only ocasionally with jaycee transfers.