FreddyBrown
Moderator
...if you love college hoops. It's a very long, multi-part article by the Washington Post about how and why the Maryland Terrapins did not stay at the top of the college game after winning their NC several years ago.
There's a lot of interesting information there for hoops junkies, but the part of broadest interest relates to how recruiting works these days, and how Maryland's Gary Williams refuses to play that game. That's in Part II of the story, at the URL pasted below.
Williams outright says that he's lost several recruits due to cheating. He refuses to be involved with the traveling teams (I won't call them AAU teams because according to the article the AAU has nothing to do with most of them) that now influence much of college basketball recruiting in a big way.
Williams is unusual, if not unique, among Division I coaches in refusing to cultivate relationships with the people who run the traveling teams. Even Iowa does it to some degree--it's well established that Iowa has relationships with the 43 Hoops program out of Minnesota (the source of Tucker and Brommer) and the Rising Stars program in the Chicago environs, for which Cully Payne, Ben Brust and Nick Neari played. (It's interesting that the only walk-on Iowa has taken under Lickliter, other than his own son, is from Rising Stars. Maybe taking a walk-on from one of these outfits is one of the "clean" ways to cultivate such a relationship? In any event Neari sounded like a good walk-on to accept on his own merits.)
Not all of this is necessarily unwholesome, and a lot of programs that are regarded as "clean" have these relationships. In a lot of ways the guys who run these traveling teams have supplanted high school coaches in terms of influence with players. I've noticed that, among other ways, in how the recruiting gurus like Van Coleman write their reports: As often as not the traveling team affiliation will be mentioned along with, or even instead of, the high school at which the kid plays.
A week or two ago after Kansas State played a big game on TV there was a string here about whether people would want Frank Martin as a head coach at Iowa. If you have the patience to read through this article you'll see a couple of paragraphs about how K State has played this recruiting game in a huge way, most notably by bribing Michael Beasley's AAU coach to join their staff (and deliver Beasley to K State) for about $350,000 more than he could have earned as an assistant on his own merits. I'm pretty confident that K State continues to do business under Martin the same way they did it under Huggins. So that may help explain why many of us answered that "would you want Frank Martin" question with a resounding "no."
On the other hand, if the goal is to win, win fast, and win big in college basketball, hiring a staff that knows how to play the game and giving them a budget with which to do so is the quickest way to get there. As I said before, Iowa cultivates relationships with some of these traveling teams, but I'm sure not all of them are dirty.
The article is a rare read because you almost never come across a coach speaking with the degree of candor Williams did in interviews with Post reporters. It's a real peek behind the curtain of college basketball recruiting. I'd love to hear Lick's or Barta's comments on this and how they deal with it, but I doubt they'd ever get into the subject and I understand why they'd avoid it like the plague. Even if you run a clean program, and I believe Iowa does under Lickliter (I base that on the kind of players I see them pursuing and landing, as well as those they don't recruit or are unable to land), you can't afford to alienate the people who really control the basketball recruiting scene all over the country. One way to do that would be to have any of your comments interpreted as applying to all such people, which would be unfair. But there does appear to be a lot of dirt in the process. And a lot of it may be beyond any effective regulation at this time.
Enjoy:
It's a Whole New Ballgame, and Maryland's Williams Isn't Playing - washingtonpost.com
There's a lot of interesting information there for hoops junkies, but the part of broadest interest relates to how recruiting works these days, and how Maryland's Gary Williams refuses to play that game. That's in Part II of the story, at the URL pasted below.
Williams outright says that he's lost several recruits due to cheating. He refuses to be involved with the traveling teams (I won't call them AAU teams because according to the article the AAU has nothing to do with most of them) that now influence much of college basketball recruiting in a big way.
Williams is unusual, if not unique, among Division I coaches in refusing to cultivate relationships with the people who run the traveling teams. Even Iowa does it to some degree--it's well established that Iowa has relationships with the 43 Hoops program out of Minnesota (the source of Tucker and Brommer) and the Rising Stars program in the Chicago environs, for which Cully Payne, Ben Brust and Nick Neari played. (It's interesting that the only walk-on Iowa has taken under Lickliter, other than his own son, is from Rising Stars. Maybe taking a walk-on from one of these outfits is one of the "clean" ways to cultivate such a relationship? In any event Neari sounded like a good walk-on to accept on his own merits.)
Not all of this is necessarily unwholesome, and a lot of programs that are regarded as "clean" have these relationships. In a lot of ways the guys who run these traveling teams have supplanted high school coaches in terms of influence with players. I've noticed that, among other ways, in how the recruiting gurus like Van Coleman write their reports: As often as not the traveling team affiliation will be mentioned along with, or even instead of, the high school at which the kid plays.
A week or two ago after Kansas State played a big game on TV there was a string here about whether people would want Frank Martin as a head coach at Iowa. If you have the patience to read through this article you'll see a couple of paragraphs about how K State has played this recruiting game in a huge way, most notably by bribing Michael Beasley's AAU coach to join their staff (and deliver Beasley to K State) for about $350,000 more than he could have earned as an assistant on his own merits. I'm pretty confident that K State continues to do business under Martin the same way they did it under Huggins. So that may help explain why many of us answered that "would you want Frank Martin" question with a resounding "no."
On the other hand, if the goal is to win, win fast, and win big in college basketball, hiring a staff that knows how to play the game and giving them a budget with which to do so is the quickest way to get there. As I said before, Iowa cultivates relationships with some of these traveling teams, but I'm sure not all of them are dirty.
The article is a rare read because you almost never come across a coach speaking with the degree of candor Williams did in interviews with Post reporters. It's a real peek behind the curtain of college basketball recruiting. I'd love to hear Lick's or Barta's comments on this and how they deal with it, but I doubt they'd ever get into the subject and I understand why they'd avoid it like the plague. Even if you run a clean program, and I believe Iowa does under Lickliter (I base that on the kind of players I see them pursuing and landing, as well as those they don't recruit or are unable to land), you can't afford to alienate the people who really control the basketball recruiting scene all over the country. One way to do that would be to have any of your comments interpreted as applying to all such people, which would be unfair. But there does appear to be a lot of dirt in the process. And a lot of it may be beyond any effective regulation at this time.
Enjoy:
It's a Whole New Ballgame, and Maryland's Williams Isn't Playing - washingtonpost.com
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