A Casual Look Back: Re-Ranking The (Glorious) 2004 Recruiting Class

Ballin' is a Habit put together a retroactive ranking of the top 2004 recruiting classes and with Jeff Green, Roy Hibbert, Tyler Crawford, and Cornelio Guibunda, the then-unranked class of Hoyas comes in at #5.  As BIAH notes, John Thompson III was also the final piece of that incoming and highly successful core.  No one would question his assessment that this the group that "helped usher in a new era for Georgetown hoops," but it also comes with a bitter taste.  Even as an unapologetic JT3-apologist, it is more and more difficult each year not to view the transition to a "new era" as a peak.  You have to wonder if in eight years from now when BIAH is reevaluating recent recruiting classes (imagine how advanced the blogging technology will be by them...holographic lunch documentation?), if the classes of 2010 and 2011 will help define the "new era" as an unequivocally successful one or a time mired with near-constant with frustration.

More after The Jump:

The one comforting note is that while checking through his 2003 and 2004 rankings, there's plenty of long forgotten transfers, busts and flameouts, and it puts some perspective on our continual bitching about the state of transfers. For example, when I read #3 Kansas' report, I know there must have been some angst about the loss of 2/5 of their recruiting class before 2007-8 rolled around:

"Galindo played just one season at KU and Giles played only two ...[but the rest] were all key pieces in the 2008 national championship team"

BIAH's list poses a few other questions: Will Georgetown's recently departed 2007 class, after a few buffer years allow for clearer hindsight, have a chance of cracking a list of this sort? (if post-season play counts, probably not) And what, if anything, can the 2008 class of Monroe/Clark/Sims still do to improve its place in history?