First exhibition game- Bradley 85 Upper Iowa 83

[Buesch N Chips]

why is it paramount? Why the need to analyze and find one tiny phrase that supposedly makes DR's prediction actually true instead of terribly wrong?

There was no analyzing. It was the first thing he said in his article, used as a disclaimer for everything said later.

The class was promising sight unseen.

I didn't say his prediction was true, in fact I don't think he was predicting anything. He was reporting that the class had potential. The definition of potential is "Ain't worth a crap, yet." It's up to the players to become worth a crap.

[Da Coach]

The recruiting class was way overhyped, mostly by Dave. I could understand if he was fed a lot of exaggerated information about the recruits, but he went out of his way to make it clear his hyperbolic projections were based on his own observations.
Do you not agree there was a bit more hype than seemed reasonable or justified considering the rather limited accomplishments of those recruits?
Heck, Xzavier Taylor and Stefan Zecevic were not even starters on their own high school and prep teams, Swopshire had not played much competitively for over 2 years, and Blake and Barnes were both D1 failures who averaged around 8 points each at junior college. And the 2 transfers (who were not really part of the 2014 recruiting class) were also kids who were not successful at their first D1 stops. I had a lot of people ask me how Dave could realistically compare that group with a couple highly successful and accomplished past recruiting classes, and I'll bet he'd like to take back some of the over-the-top stuff he said in that column, as well as those over-the-top fluff pieces in the November HOOPS section.

BTW, I can recall several past recruiting classes just in this last decade that were far better, and yet every time any fan here would post optimistic expectations, there would always be a hoard of negative nellies telling them to back off their optimism, including a couple posters who kept claiming those who were optimistic were actually hurting the recruits by placing a burden of way too high expectations on them.

[Buesch N Chips]

The recruiting class was way overhyped

In retrospect, it's easy to say that now. Did you say it then?

[Da Coach]

In retrospect, it's easy to say that now. Did you say it then?

I did believe it then, and my posts are available here to search for. I was not one of those doing the hyping.