We've "competed" with Duke/Kentucky for the likes of Chris Burgess, Jabari Parker, Mark Pope and Frank Jackson (and I'm sure others), but we went 0-fer in those. Doesn't mean anything at all unless we start winning some.
Furthermore, we can pat ourselves on the back all we want for being competitive and recruiting "rivals", but it could be a strategy that backfires horrifically if we don't win any. We can offer every single 5* recruit on the planet and tell ourselves we're in the big leagues now, but the potential is there for it to be a massive waste and have squandered the 3* and occasional 4* we could have more realistically gotten.
I hope the current strategy pans out.