It's talent if you ask me. We have quite a bit of it in certain spots, quite a lack of it in others. A lot of solid players, but top-bottom, starters, depth, we don't have the kind of elite talent that puts us in the conversation with the elite teams of the country. Which we need, if we want to perform like that.
This all goes back to recruiting misses and lackluster effort in Bo's first few years. These past few seasons we've graduated our core of talented 2007 guys, then lost Dennard and Lavonte and Crick. 2010 was a year where we had the talent set up for a big run at things. We've been in transition since, and it doesn't help that not enough has been waiting in the wings to make it happen. Still waiting on that D-line. Good, solid, hard-working guys like Compton, but name one national-level star on that defense. Name two. You start to see why we're in trouble.
Gosh, I really thought we might win only 8 games this year. We're looking at 11. Yes, we've been exposed, but I do think we probably squeezed a near-best-case "win" # for the year out of this team.