I've found this thread to actually be quite interesting. The number of "can't miss" prospects that missed was amazing. Many of these people, I've just forgotten about.
When push comes to shove, the "misses" break down into four categories:
1) Over-hyped -- Players that just weren't ready for prime time. These are guys that dominated high school and caught the eye of a recruiter. Unfortunately, when they got to college, their talent was quite pedestrian. We see less of this than in past years because of sports academies and summer leagues that are more consistent in the talent they bring to their leagues.
2) Crappy Coaching -- I'd be willing to bet that some of the bigger misses in MU history comes down to poor coaching. The recruit is indeed really good but he has a coach that doesn't bring the most out of him. Hello, Wojo?
3) Bad Habits -- Chocolate Moose was a classic. He ate his way out of school. Others are really good but don't have the internal drive to practice, hit the weight rooms or manage their diets the way they should. Drug use also falls into this category. Again, this probably is less a case today at Marquette with Shaka, but I'll betcha this is a bigger problem in the past than most admit.
4) Good Player/Bad Team -- Glenn Rivers and maybe Henry fell into this category. Both were extremely talented but the team wasn't of the caliber in which their talents mattered. While I thought Henry was ill-disciplined, I'll also note the team around him was so bad that no matter what he did, nothing mattered. If a team has only one legitimate threat, defenses collapse around the threat. There were times when Wojo's offense was so transparent that Henry was triple teamed. They knew.....
