Really can't overstate how big of a blow losing Clayton is. He's one of true impact transfers in the portal, a kid that's in the top 25 on every site that does portal rankings, and those rankings have a very high degree of variance.
While I have no doubt Pitino will field a competitive roster this upcoming season and will elevate this program bigtime over the next few years, my expectations for year one have been lowered by whats transpired over the past week or so.
Fact is we're really not in the running for any of the remaining big fish currently in the portal aside from Ledlum where all signs are pointing to him going to Indiana. I know some people are saying it's still early and other high level players may hit the portal, I don't quite think that's the case. Sure there may be one or two here or there but there won't be a flood of them hitting the portal in Mid April onwards.
Even if we hit on all or most of the guys we're prioritizing now we're looking at a potential backcourt consisting of Posh (if he's welcome back), Jenkins, Thomasson, Conway, Dual. That's good enough to be competitive but don't think that's near NCAA Tournament level especially with how murderously good the Big East is going to be this coming season.
Still early and maybe we emerge for solid guys like Hunter Sallis or RJ Luis but think Pitino is going to need to pull a rabbit out of his hat to field an NCAA Tournament caliber roster in year one.
Before everybody jumps down my throat, like I said - I believe Pitino is the best thing to happen to this program in my lifetime and will do huge things here. But all of the early hyperbole like Brandon Tierney saying "He'll make them a top 15 team overnight" and "Look at what he'll do in the portal in his first 5 hours on the job" is not the actual reality especially when competing against other straight up killer coaches for these prized portal recruits.
