There are many different areas of influence that come into play when a prospect is deciding what college to attend. Parents/Guardians, Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) coaches, and in-season coaches all give recruits advice on where they would like them to play, with some factors carrying more weight than others. As a recruiter, you must identify the relationship that it is most important to win over of the people surrounding the player.
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| Athlete hugging parent (Alan Stein/StrongerTeam.com) |
A majority of college basketball players have the same general answer when asked who is the strongest person they know: their mother, father, or guardian. This comes from years of watching their parents/guardians sacrifice and struggle just to give them a living. These recruits will do just about anything to repay their parents/guardians back and give them a better life, including listening to their advice. For this reason, building a strong relationship with the parents/guardians might be the most important of all.
Missouri coach Tim Fuller would visit recruit Johnathan Williams’s mother for runs at her local track when he had free time.1 This eventually led to Williams signing with Fuller and the Tigers. When Providence Head Coach Ed Cooley was recruiting a top national recruit, he made a strong impression on the players’ grandmother. When asked how the tiny school of Providence could score such a big recruit he simply asked back with a grin, “Who can say no to grandma?”2
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| Old Dominion coach working relationship with AAU coach (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post) |
There is no secret about the influence of coaches on where top basketball prospects’ decide to play college basketball. Many of these young athletes have a tough home life, so they lean on the advice of their basketball authoritative figure. Getting in well with these coaches often pays huge dividends, but comes with a higher price than time in some cases. Under NCAA guidelines, a program can hire a recruit’s high school or AAU coach - provided he is placed in a coaching role.3 Many schools use this loophole (often called a package deal) by hiring these coaches that use their ties to bring in top recruits.
Although a coach might discover a diamond in the rough from a YouTube video or at the occasional last-minute Christmas tournament, the most logical method of signing top talent is through relationship building. Like the old saying goes, “it’s not what you know, but who you know” and yes this goes for recruiting too.
REFERENCES
110 Things You Need to Know about College Basketball Recruiting. (2014, November 7). Retrieved July 22, 2015, from http://athlonsports.com/college-basketball/10-things-you-need-know-about-college-basketball-recruiting
2Hopkins, M. (2014, July 10). Providence Friars Basketball and Recruiting Front Page. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from http://www.scout.com/college/providence/story/1420065-analyzing-ed-cooley-s-recruiting-strategy
3Prunty, B. (2014, December 28). Colleges Often Entice Top Prospects by Recruiting Their Mentors, Too. Retrieved July 22, 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/29/sports/ncaabasketball/colleges-often-entice-top-prospects-by-recruiting-their-mentors-too.html?_r=0
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