NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

Currently we are in the midst of the early signing period for the recruiting process and with that means doors are closing and decisions are being made across the country. Below you find out about some of the commitments and to see a full list you can click here to see them by school. Good luck and happy recruiting!

University of Arizona (1)

Arizona State University (3)

University of Southern California (5)

University of Santa Barbara (2)

Florida State University (3)

University of Central Florida (1)

University of Kansas (1)

University of Kentucky (1)

Boston College (4)

University of New Mexico (3)

Syracuse University (4)

Depaul University (3)

Wake Forest (5)

University of Florida (2)

University of Miami (2)

University of Oklahoma (3)

Oklahoma State University (4)

University of Oregon (5)

Clemson University (2)

University of South Carolina (5)

University of Memphis (4)

University of Tennessee (2)

Baylor University (2)

University of Texas (1)

Colorado State University (3)

University of Idaho (4)

University of Wyoming (1)

Montana State University (1)

Jeremy Tyler has been described as a basketball player in many ways.  He is used to being described as a young phenom, the next big thing, even the best prospect in 100 years.  Last year he made the groundbreaking decision to leave high school early to play professionally in Israel.

However, lately the words describing Jeremy have turned negative.  For the first time in his life, he is facing adversity and the early returns are not promising.  The New York Times checked in Jeremy and his rocky start in Israel.

He just isn’t used to being described in a negative way.  The young phenom who made the decision to skip his final year of year of high school to play professionally in Israel.

His coach calls him lazy and out of shape. The team captain says he is soft. His teammates say he needs to learn to shut up and show up on time. He has no friends on the team. In extensive interviews with Tyler, his teammates, coaches, his father and advisers, the consensus is that he is so naïve and immature that he has no idea how naïve and immature he is. So enamored with his vast potential, Tyler has not developed the work ethic necessary to tap it.

“The question is whether he’ll take responsibility of his career,” Haifa Coach Avi Ashkenazi said. “If he thinks he’s going to be in the N.B.A. because his name is Jeremy Tyler and he was a very good high school player, he will not be.”

Obviously this story’s ending has yet to be written, but things don’t sound promising.  There is a reason that professionals in all types of careers attend college.  Even genius college drop-outs like Bill Gates finished high school.  We could finally be seeing some push back on the rush to get to the pros.  Here’s to hoping that student-athletes around the country see the position Jeremy Tyler has put himself into, and remember the importance of academics.

The other week, this article was posted on Rivals about who is the best college basketball coach under 40.

GERRY AHERN SAYS …

It would be easy to attribute Brad Stevens’ stunning success at Butler to the players he inherited from Todd Lickliter when Lickliter left for Iowa after the 2006-07 season.

In his first season, Stevens led Butler to a school- and Horizon League-record 30-4 mark, 19 consecutive weeks in the AP Top 25 (including three in the top 10), a first-round NCAA tournament victory and an overtime loss in the second round to fifth-ranked Tennessee.

MIKE HUGUENIN SAYS …

I’m cheating a bit by choosing Arizona’s Sean Miller, who turns 41 next month. But, hey, he’s 40 now, so I’m going with him.

He faces a tough task in following Lute Olson (well, sort of) at Arizona, but Miller has the X’s and O’s skills and recruiting ability to get it done.

To read the full article, click here.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work and learning from failure…

During the NFL season its become an almost mortal lock that I share an opinion from ESPN writer Gregg Easterbrook’s weekly TMQ column outlining his thoughts on everything from amateur sports to NASA.  This week Easterbrook highlights a new joint venture between the NCAA and NBA.

The Menace of the AAU: Recently the NBA and NCAA signed a $30 million deal to establish some kind of prep academy for top basketball players, in hopes of reducing the negative influence of basketball-based “high schools” where athletes spend more time in the gym than in class. (The insidious aspect of basketball academies is that all states require public school students to pass proficiency exams to receive high school diplomas; but there are no such rules for private schools, which can issue any diplomas they please, thus encouraging the diploma-mill approach to circumventing the high school graduation requirement.) The NBA-NCAA plan is an effort to undercut the AAU, where the basketball emphasis is on flash, stats and strutting, while teamwork is a taboo. The NBA and NCAA have worried for years that AAU influence — top high school players are constantly participating in “all-star games” where there isn’t even any attempt to engage in team basketball — is lowering the overall quality of play. This threatens the goose that lays the golden eggs.

And it inculcates an attitude that all that matters is showing off for the NBA draft, not achieving anything lasting. Think of the Ohio State team that lost the NCAA men’s championship game in 2007, or the Memphis team that lost the following year. Either team, if together a while, might have become really memorable — Ohio State had Greg Oden and Mike Conley Jr., Memphis had Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts. Since three of those four were freshmen, if they’d all stuck around in college longer and stayed eligible, those teams might have improved and become truly great a year or two down the road. Instead, everybody split early for the pros. It’s said that in the locker room after Memphis botched the final two minutes of what would have been a national championship, Rose cried inconsolably. He’ll make lots of money in the pros, but will he ever be involved in anything worth crying about?

Any attempt to re-focus college athletics on academics is right up my alley. Here’s to hoping the venture is successful.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post the NCAA was considering a slate of recruiting reforms to help clean up several gray areas of the rulebook.  Here is the NCAA’s official release of the meeting results:

The Division I Board of Directors approved a package of proposals designed to curb compensatory relationships with people associated with men’s basketball prospects and suspend coaches who violate those rules, sending a message to the membership that the issue is a top priority for presidents.

The package received broad support from a number of constituencies, including conference commissioners, basketball coaches, the Amateur Athletic Union, the chair of the Legislative Council and other presidents.

“The process shows the NCAA at its very best: We identified a need; we brought all the players to the table – including the coaches – to build consensus and support; and we worked within the governance system for solutions,” said Board chair Jim Barker, president at Clemson.

The plan adopted by the Board takes some actions immediately and puts others into the legislative cycle to be considered by the Division I governance structure.

The immediate actions include a tighter definition of a “recruited student-athlete” in men’s basketball to include anyone who has received recruiting materials or had any recruiting contact with a coaching staff member or was asked to attend an institutional camp or enroll at an institution. The Board also immediately adopted a series of interpretations meant to eliminate the funneling of money to people associated with prospects through:

* Employment relating to noncoaching staff positions

* Employment at camps and clinics

* Payment of consulting fees

* Subscriptions to recruiting services with limited value

* Donations to nonprofits

* 1-900 numbers for telephone contact with a recruit.

The proposal also includes sanctions for head coaches and assistant coaches that range from being unable to coach regular-season games to being withheld from coaching NCAA postseason contests. The NCAA enforcement staff and the Division I Committee on Infractions would be the adjudicating bodies in those instances. Tougher eligibility consequences for prospects or student-athletes involved in the violations are also part of the package.

A group of commissioners presented the proposal to the Board, including Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany.

“This is the NCAA addressing issues in absolutely the correct way. All the parties that have an interest from the educational perspective were represented,” Delany said. “It really places the enforcement of these standards at a very high priority for the staff.”

Jim Haney, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, also supported the plan, indicating that his board had been concerned about the men’s basketball recruiting environment for some time.

“For us, this package is consistent with the direction we’ve been going in the last several years, and we’re pleased to support it,” Haney said. “We encourage continued dialogue to address these issues.”

While some Board members expressed a desire to be sure the regular process for legislation was followed, Legislative Council chair Joseph D’Antonio said his group supported the proposal before the Board for immediate action because the issue was important enough to demand Board attention.

Other proposals will be introduced into the 2009-10 legislative cycle, to be vetted by the Legislative Council and the membership. These proposals target:

* Noncoaching staff hiring practices by prohibiting institutions from hiring as noncoaching personnel individuals associated with prospects two years before or after the prospect’s actual or anticipated enrollment. The legislation is intended to offer coaches a choice between recruiting the prospect and hiring the person associated with the prospect.

* Institutional camp/clinic employment by allowing institutions to hire only its own staff members or enrolled students at its camps and clinics.

* Institutional camp operation by allowing recruiting during institutional camps, and stating that prospects do not have to leave the locale to begin an unofficial visit.

* Nonscholastic events on campus by prohibiting Division I institutions from hosting, sponsoring or conducting nonscholastic men’s basketball events on campus or in facilities regularly used by the institution.

* Payment of consulting fees by prohibiting fees to individuals associated with a prospect.

While the proposals deal specifically with men’s basketball, several presidents indicated a desire to keep an eye on the recruiting environment in other sports as well – especially football and women’s basketball – to see if similar action is necessary in those sports.

The Legislative Council will review and cast initial votes on the proposals the Board entered into the regular legislative cycle at its meeting at the 2010 NCAA Convention in January. The proposal also referred several issues to the various cabinets and committees in the governance structure, including changes to the recruiting calendar, tryouts and communication with prospects. Various subgroups will examine those issues with the possibility of creating legislation for the 2010-11 cycle.

College Basketball recruiting has long lived in the gray area of the rule book.  Top recruits would receive Nike’s for their AAU team and magically end up at a college sporting the swoosh.  AAU coaches followed their stars to college.  Summer camps would charge college coaches hundreds of dollars for a “recruiting service” just to be admitted to a gym.  Brothers, cousins, coaches and hanger-ons of all types would land high paying summer basketball camp jobs.

Now the National Association of Basketball Coaches are putting their foot down.

“There is a very strong feeling amongst our coaches that this money trail has got to be shut down,” said NABC executive director Jim Haney. “We want to break down that perception that everyone has their hand out and is looking at colleges as a bank. I want to stress that it’s not everyone who has their hand out, and certainly there are some among our coaching ranks more than willing to pay the money, but the overall feeling is it has to stop.”

Today the NCAA Division I board of directors will consider a strong reform package.

Among the meatier suggestions in the package:

• Eliminating so-called package deals, making it nearly impossible for a college program to hire any of the myriad of hangers-on associated with prospective student-athletes.

• Disallowing college coaches to subscribe to recruiting services run by people associated with prospects. This would curtail services offered by AAU programs (and others) that charge colleges to subscribe but sometimes offer little to no information on the prospect.

• Preventing payment to nonprofit organizations benefiting summer-club teams, prospects or people attached to prospects.

• Preventing coaches from hiring outsiders to work at their camps and clinics.

All are designed, in the words of Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany, to “bright line” what is legal and illegal in a portion of the black-and-white rulebook that has been smudged gray.

The board of directors has the authority to enact some of the changes immediately. Most would go in effect by May 2010.

Reforms like this are meant to get the illegal money out of recruiting.  NCSA supports this mission 100%.  One of the backbones of our business is allowing coaches access to our recruiting database for free.  By freeing up the information, schools can compete for students based on finding the academic and athletic fit.  Here’s to hoping the NABC succeeds.

The NBA collective bargaining agreement is coming to an end in the next year and already attention is being focused on the NBA age limit that was instituted in 2005.  Many applauded the rule when it was put in place, hoping the immaturity we had come to expect from NBA rookies would cease.  Others were happy that these talented youngsters would be forced to attend a year of college to learn how to manage their future finances.  Some were just happy to see college basketball get a boost with some star power like Greg Oden and Derrick Rose.  Four years later, many of the former cheerleaders for the rule have revised their position.

The New York Times ran on op-ed piece by Buzz Bissinger calling for an end to the rule.

One thing is clear: raising the minimum age to 19 hasn’t helped the players in any way. Superstars may go to college for a year, but for most it has nothing to do with getting an education. As the legendary coach Bobby Knight has pointed out, these players can retain their first year’s college eligibility without ever going to a class after their first semester.

If David Stern truly cared about his players’ well-being, he would advocate that all the silliness over the sanctity of the college academic experience stop and that N.B.A.-bound players get some share of the millions of dollars they generate: in the greatest capitalistic society in the history of the world, this may be the greatest inequity.

And if the N.C.A.A. truly cared about improving colleges instead of settling for the extra year before eligibility that Stern is talking about, it should use its considerable influence to demand that both the N.B.A. and N.F.L. foot the college’s bill for training pro athletes by paying a given amount each year for each player successfully drafted from college. The money would go into a fund for academic scholarships at the colleges these players attended. It wouldn’t perhaps turn young superstars into student-athletes, but in today’s hideous economic times, it might turn some deserving teenagers into students.

Sports Illustrated’s Seth Davis reacted with his own piece on the rule.

Personally, I always opposed the age minimum, even though it has been an unmistakable boon to college basketball, the sport that helps me feed my kids. Yes, I know there are issues of academic integrity when kids are spending basically a semester and a half on campus, but from a purely marketing and business standpoint, would anyone argue that college hoops would have been better off the last few years if Greg Oden, O.J. Mayo and Kevin Love hadn’t spent a year on campus? But I opposed the rule from a standpoint of basic fairness. Kids have a right to make the best choices for themselves, even if they made the wrong decisions. There is obviously a market for their services, and they should have the right to test it.

A third-way rule has emerged from many circles in college basketball, and it is not a bad idea: Allow high school players to declare for the draft, but if they go to school, they have to go for two years. But based on my conversations with Hunter, I think that will be a tough sell. His theory is that the real motivation behind the rule was -– surprise! –- money. If a player comes into the league when he’s older, that shaves time off the back end off of his contract, where he is making the biggest money. At any rate, the NBA and NBAPA are about to head into a very dicey negotiation for their next collective bargaining agreement, which will be complicated by the severe economic climate. If Hunter keeps his back up, I have a hard time imagining David Stern pushing this issue at the expense of the more pressing ones.

If the third-way rule isn’t adopted, I agree with Bissinger that the age minimum should be dropped. There is actually a much more simple solution to this conundrum. If David Stern really doesn’t want these young kids in his league, he should tell his teams to stop drafting them.

I take the same stance as Coach Knight.  An end to the rule just means another spot for a real student athlete who wants a college education as well as the opportunity to play.  I’m not naive enough to think that is every player’s goal but at least the complete charade by players like Derrick rose that can’t even pass an SAT will be over.

At the very least it will be interesting to see where the NCAA fall publicly on the rule.  Will the support raising the age or keeping it the same.  From a dollar and cents perspective the added star power in college helps fill their coffers.  However, the NCAA does suffer a black eye with each one and done that heads to the NBA only to find massive eligibility concerns behind for their former teams (OJ Mayo at USC, Derrick Rose at Memphis, John Wall at UK to name a few).  What are your thoughts on the divisive issue?

I wanted to share some feedback I received from several NCSA basketball athletes that are getting ready for their first college basketball season to start.

“Its perfect the only big change is strength but I have been in the weight room.”

“So far things are going fine. Preseason practices started 10 days ago and it looks like I’ll have a pretty good chance to play as a freshman.”

“NYU is great! I’ve had a very smooth transition thus far. Pre-season work outs have been very challenging, but manageable. I couldn’t be happier here at NYU. I absolutely love my team and the school! I can’t wait for the real season to start. Thanks for all your help getting me here!”

“College life I going good so far. It definitely is a huge step up from high school but I think I am starting to get the hang of it. Conditioning has been really tough but I know it will help me in the long run. All of my teamates are really cool we all hang out with each other and look after one another.”

“Everything has been going fine since I began class here at Austin College. We have 6 a.m conditioning 3 times a week and we have an open gym where the basketball team runs 5on5 3 times a week for right now.”

“I will say that college is totally different from high school. But I love it; still adjusting though. I have actually been red shirted due to a knee injury. Conditioning is brutal but awesome! We have been having 2-a-days which are killer. Again I can’t thank you guys enough for everything you have done for me!”

“Conditioning has been very hard, they are pushing us to our breaking point. There is a bunch of stories, I have a great roommate, who I found out also is with NCSA.”

“Hey, school is great, we just finished conditioning today. We have been conditioning for about 3 weeks now we lift and do plyos from 630 to 800 on Mondays Wednesdays and Fridays and on Tuesdays and Thursdays we play for a couple of hours and then we have to shoot two days a week on top of that. Its really tough but I’m seeing serious gains and I think the team is looking really good. I’m extremely happy with how everything is going.”

“Everything is going great so far. Conditioning is obviously pretty tough, but I love it. I’m having fun with the guys.”

“So far college has been good. It was a little different at first but I’m finally getting used to it. Conditioning is going good.. I don’t think I have ever ran this much in my life (lol), but I like it because I know I’m going to be in shape.”

“College has been going great. Conditioning is going great as well. I am almost over my homesickness and starting to get into the groove of college life.”

“I have been a little busy out here. But I had a pretty smooth transition from high school and college is great. Conditioning is a little harder then I expected it to be at the begining but I am getting used to it now.”

“iHoops, the official joint youth basketball initiative of the NCAA and the NBA, has launched its Web site, http://www.ihoops.com/, to provide support services and programs for parents, players, coaches, officials and administrators of youth basketball programs.”

“The site includes training techniques, rules of the game, educational programs for coaches and officials, health and wellness tips, and information on the importance of education and life skills.”

This was announced on the NCAA website Monday, to see the announcement please click here.

To view iHoops, please click here.