The Recruiting Wire 4.22
April 22nd, 2008 - byUSA Today’s Jim Halley recently sat down with a round table of top basketball recruits to discuss a variety of topics. Obviously recruiting was one of the major subjects.
Each of the players got his first recruiting letters in his first two years of high school. Though the NCAA outlawed the use of text messaging by coaches to recruit players this season, the practice was still out of hand enough that players would turn off their phones.
“Some of the coaches were ridiculous,” Gordon said. “Some would text you to say, ‘How was breakfast?’ ” Another player added that the assistant coaches were the worst offenders of texting, perhaps because they had more time on their hands than the head coaches.
One recruiting rule the players would keep would be the early signing period.
“It lets you focus on school, so it’s not all about basketball,” Gordon said.
The players also discussed their individual development and gave a lot of credit to the AAU circuit while acknowledging the strength of their high school programs.
“AAU,” Walker said. “Because in AAU, you play everybody.”
“You can’t really hide (in AAU),” Jennings said. “People will show you up a bit in the summer.”
“It seems like there’s more freedom in AAU,” Davis said. “In high school, it is more structured.”
High school does have advantages though.
“You get to rest in high school,” Davis said. “Sometimes in AAU, you have to play like 12 games in one day.”
“My high school coach really worked with me on the fundamentals,” Gordon said. “He did a lot of repetition on my post moves.”
They were unanimous in their disregard of their rankings with scouting services.
“You just play for the love of the game. You don’t really look at anything else. You just play for yourself, basically,” Jennings said, the rest nodding in agreement.
What can other recruits learn from this discussion? If you aren’t hearing from coaches constantly you need to get more realistic about your options. You also need to be supplement high school play with AAU ball. Most importantly, you can’t get hung up on rankings or stars. Recruits need to focus on getting better and staying pro-active, not worrying about a website.
