i dont think oldave 1.0 ever took anything that was anywhere close to a rebuild. the first two teams i ever took were not great, but not bad. in iba i never moved for 40 seasons or whatver. and in tark i was racing to syracuse so i moved 3 or 4 times and always took the absolute best team i could find. and in wooden i moved to the best d2 team i could find whihc in that case was pretty much the best d2 team in the country. oh, lamost forgot, went back to wooden to get humiliated in upstate d3 power conference... cant recal but i think rochester was Bish when i took them over. i think that was probably the only program i didnt leave better than when i found it.
after 3 year hiatus, oldave 2.0 decided to try several rebuilds.
babson in rupp i took for the sole reason that babson is the very worst HD d3 program of all time with only 4 NT wins ever through 700 plus seasons and never been past the second round ever in any world (unless it happened in the past couple of months) truth is i dont really see any inherent obstacles to winning at babson, maybe not the best place, but gotta be a bunch that are harder to recruit from including the aforementioned Rochester. but, nonetheless, im excited about the prospect of doing something that has never been done before.
simlar story at Johnson C smith in d2 iba and
elms in naismith where we are trying to do an entire conference rebuild. had to be one of the most pathetic conferences ever and 12 of us got together and are trying to turn it around and create an uberconference.
one of the things i like about taking over pretty good programs, is precisely the thing that my buddy tjoe doesnt like... you get a good collection of players, but they often have very different strengths and weaknesses than you would ordinarily select. eventually, you flip the roster over and end up with all the types of players that you generally gravitate toward, but, for those first couple of years, you are kind of forced into a little different style and out of your normal comfort zone, and, since there is good talent there, you are obviously trying to win right awaye
oh, one of my other programs now is whittier which was not a rebuild at all, in fact was very strong, but whittier, despite something like 15 final 4s and 8 runner ups has never won an NC in any world. im pretty sure they are the best prgram never to have won an NC. not sure i will be able to do anything about that... but im trying.