On the Angel point, here's the main thing I'm looking at right now; do Angel and Gipson appear to be two players you can build a competitive (Top 4) Big 12 program around when they are JR/SRs?
The returns are VERY early, but I think the answer is yes. I want 4/5 star kids as much as anything, but at the end of the day if you can bring in talent at least every 2 years that you can build around, then you can sustain a program. Even with Frank's weird/frustrating/dumb "buy in or quit" with yearly team tryouts recruiting policy, IF he can continue to bring in a couple guys every year that truly buy in he can probably still sustain and win. The frustrating thing is adding these borderline JUCOs that seemingly never buy in and is a big reason every November has these ridiculous games that shouldn't happen. But I tend to think this is what Frank does and how he builds teams. Its sort of the high school coach in him having new tryouts every season to build teams. Thing is it was probably easier for him to recruit when he was coaching high school.