2015 recruits

[gtmoBlue]

Great discussion guys. Very informative and enlightening on the group of local recruits. Really helpful for those of us outside the local area. Thanks.

More of this sort of discussion, with inputs from NebHSHoops, Omaha Sports Authority, JJ's new group, and other área high school and AAU stakeholders is welcomed. Perhaps a permanent topic thread for local kids?

Again, thanks guys.

[FreddyMac]

Just give me some athletes, I don't care where they're from. There's a reason why teams like WSU and VCU have made runs in the NCAA tournament and we haven't even though we had a three-time first-team All-America on our team. They recruited a bunch of athletes and sprinkled in a shooter here and there whereas we recruited a bunch of shooters with an athlete or two mixed in there. If you look at our roster I think last year's recruiting class gives us a high probability of having a solid team the the two years after this next one. Throw some athletic defenders in there like these local kids supposedly are and you can win with that team. Sure I want a bunch of top 100 kids who can do everything but we're not a recruiting juggernaut so in my opinion the biggest priority is fixing our deficiencies and athleticism is definitely one of those.

[Wizard of Westroads]

The coaches are looking at the local kids and comparing with the ones they see on the road and they're offering. Simple as that. Whether they pan out or not, who knows? But the staff works its collective tail off, so they've got plenty to compare these guys to. Coach Sellers has seen plenty of East Coast talent, and I can't imagine he wouldn't speak up if these guys were "mid-major" level. I'm more worried that Khyri Thomas blows up in prep school and gets a better offer than I am that we'll offer him and he's a bust. The kid is a relentless 6-4 defender and is a jet going to the basket. Decent ball skills too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnBlENaWEmg
The local AAU teams have been slow to the party, but they're having a good summer. You're going see a lot more interest in kids in the next few classes. Maybe Omaha kids help us make the next step.

[JacobPadilla]

I've only been covering Nebraska high school basketball for a year and I haven't had the chance to see the high school ball in other states (planned to go down to the Mullen's tournament until I got sick, but alas...), so my frame of reference is very small and I'm far from the best guy to judge what level players' talent translates to. However, I've seen a lot this past year and I think I can speak on it somewhat.

In regards to Khyri, his eligibility issues definitely hurt his recruitment IMO. At the beginning of last season, his main offers were James Madison, Old Dominion, Kansas City and Omaha. I never bothered looking into whether or not he picked up any others during the season because I knew he wouldn't be eligible.

I really do think playing in Nebraska hurt him as well. The competition just isn't very good and there are fewer chances to impress higher level coaches. Mike Sautter (my boss at Nebraska HS Hoops) was on The Bottom Line Thursday with Mike'l Severe, and he made a really good point about Justin's OSA team winning the Mullen's Tournament last weekend. There's been a lot of interest (from various levels) for almost everybody on that team because of their run. The more games they won, the more coaches there were watching in the next game. Had they lost in the quarterfinals (they were down 30-10 against a good Arizona Power squad) those kids would have missed out on a huge opportunity. But they won, and they're are reaping the rewards.

When there are only a couple major college type players in a given class like there usually are here, coaches probably aren't going to use resources scouting here as much as they do places with a higher concentration of talent. The top guys like Akoy are going to be seen regardless, but I really do think it hurts guys in the next couple of tiers below that - guys that aren't necessarily top 150 recruits but are still talented enough to contribute to high majors.

As far as worrying about CU relying too much on local guys, it's not like they're striking out everywhere else and relying on local kids to fill their classes. They're looking at the very best prospects in the state. Khyri was the best player this past year. Justin and Malik are the two best players in the 2015 class. Triston Simpson is the best player in the 2016 class. Aguek Arop (who just got a Nebraska offer after the Mullen's Tourney and will likely get one from CU at some point) is one of if not the best player in the 2017 class. There's a decent chance Creighton is going to have some interest in Junub Char (the best incoming freshman) depending on how he develops. Nebraska isn't a hot bed of hoops talent and the pool is very shallow, but there are a couple gems at the top more often than not. Recruiting always starts at home, and I think Creighton is doing its due diligence by taking an interest in the top products Nebraska produces. And Freddy, every player I mentioned in this paragraph is a really, really good athlete.

[Chicagojayfan]

...

When there are only a couple major college type players in a given class like there usually are here, coaches probably aren't going to use resources scouting here as much as they do places with a higher concentration of talent. The top guys like Akoy are going to be seen regardless, but I really do think it hurts guys in the next couple of tiers below that - guys that aren't necessarily top 150 recruits but are still talented enough to contribute to high majors.

....

Really good discussion in this thread all the way around. I do think that Nebraska State Basketball is reaping the rewards of the football programs in Omaha just not being very good along with the immigrant population in Omaha bring a lot of good athletes into teams there as well. Kids that might not have been BBall players in the 80's and 90's are playing hoops now instead of football.

But that said, coaches need to fly a ton of miles and scout a ton of players. In the end, they need to prioritize. Often they guess that the top 50 kids in Chicago or even the top 100 in Chicago are going to be a better investment than the top 2-3 or even 5 in Omaha -- So unless they have a clear top 100 guy in Omaha, they fly to Chicago regularly and don't bother flying into Omaha.

The point you make about Justin's team getting visibility as they won games in the tournament makes it clear to my why Creighton offered as soon as they saw how far he'd come in their camp - they didn't want to slow play him and end up in a wide open competition with a ton of other teams who wanted a 6-10 (and maybe 7-foot someday) big man with that kind of athleticism and shot blocking ability... which is pretty much a population of every team in the country.

[McKinney's Neighbor]

Isn't the whole point of these kids playing on the AAU circuit that they get to constantly expose themselves to college coaches? The OSA teams travel nearly every weekend in the summer to various tournaments in the Midwest with the top teams even traveling throughout the nation. I get that not many D-1 coaches want to spend their precious winter nights traveling to and recruiting in Nebraska, but these kids get sooooo many opportunities to make an impression during the summer. I don't buy the "no exposure" argument for kids that play AAU ball. Now, if these guys played baseball during the summer or something where they weren't getting the summer exposure, that would be a different story. I don't think that's the case for most these kids, though. I know the U-16 OSA team isn't a world beater by any means and they always have college coaches checking in on their games.

As far as worrying about CU relying too much on local guys, it's not like they're striking out everywhere else and relying on local kids to fill their classes.

With regards to the 2015 class??? Isn't that exactly what's happening? We're about 40 guys down the 2015 list right now.

[Chicagojayfan]

Isn't the whole point of these kids playing on the AAU circuit that they get to constantly expose themselves to college coaches? The OSA teams travel nearly every weekend in the summer to various tournaments in the Midwest with the top teams even traveling throughout the nation. I get that not many D-1 coaches want to spend their precious winter nights traveling to and recruiting in Nebraska, but these kids get sooooo many opportunities to make an impression during the summer. I don't buy the "no exposure" argument for kids that play AAU ball. Now, if these guys played baseball during the summer or something where they weren't getting the summer exposure, that would be a different story. I don't think that's the case for most these kids, though. I know the U-16 OSA team isn't a world beater by any means and they always have college coaches checking in on their games.

As far as worrying about CU relying too much on local guys, it's not like they're striking out everywhere else and relying on local kids to fill their classes.

With regards to the 2015 class??? Isn't that exactly what's happening? We're about 40 guys down the 2015 list right now.

That is absolutely the point, but see Jacob's post for the description of how coaches started coming when Justin's OSA team won the tournament last weekend. Different AAU teams get different levels of coverage (kind of like the coverage for the summer league in Omaha). A team in Omaha isn't getting much attention at the national level unless they really impress. Justin's team did that and now it's looking like a pretty good deal that Creighton went after him fast when he was in their camp. If they hadn't he'd likely be getting a lot of attention, and at least now the barrier is pretty high/unlikely for teams to try to start recruiting him as he's a home town kid who loves Creighton.

Take Patton as a case study -- very average junior year, continues growing and puts on 20 lbs. He plays at a tourney in KC that our coaches see, they've been watching him and see how far he's come. He comes to CU's elite camp and dominates -- they know where this is headed and offer. No fault that the rest of the country didn't see him-- they didn't know. We did, and we offered almost immediately.

I've been told that Thomas got attention from a number of D1 teams on the AAU circuit, but they all knew he wouldn't quality and that's a very different story from recruiting someone in Omaha who is at that level and likely to qualify. We were able to evaluate him and offered. We additionally have the year of prep school to keep tabs on him now and decide on the relationship prior to '15. I imagine we made the offer with some stipulations on what we expect in terms of academic progress and basketball progress.

What evidence is there that our coaches would jump the gun and start trying to snap up local kids because we are losing out on others? We didn't show any hesitancy in waiting for kids last year and didn't jump to fill roster spots at all -- instead we were patient and waited for 2 top 100/150 kids for the HS class and then landed two of the top transfers on the market as well. If we were so impatient, why not grab a couple of lower ranked kids last year? Nope, we didn't do it then and we aren't doing it now.

Patton is a special case and I strongly argue that he is nowhere/nohow a reach. For once, we got lucky instead of some other team getting lucky and landing a kid like this.
Thomas is probably more complicated due to the Prep School trip, but we know more about where he is academically/physically than any other school in the country due to proximity.

Other than that we don't have offers out, although I am happy we are keeping tabs on HLUCHOWECKYJ. he's too good of an athlete to not be aware of, and the kind of kid who could really take a huge jump while playing summer ball (physical, 6-0, explosive guys can explode if their skill levels catch up with the rest of the package).

[McKinney's Neighbor]

In my opinion, if you're good enough in today's day and age (YouTube, social media, AAU circuits, 24/7 basketball), people find you regardless of where you live or what teams your AAU team beats. We disagree on this. That's fine.

Secondly, from 40,000 feet, it feels like our first 40 or so targets for 2015 (or at least the kids in the 2015 class we offered) either went elsewhere or are holding out for better offers so then we offered the local guys. If they were high targets of ours and we offered them right away with the rest of our 2015 targets, I wouldn't get the feeling we're settling. We didn't though. Maybe there's some truth to the extenuating circumstances for both - late growth for Patton and no one recruiting Thomas because he has bad grades/lives in Omaha - that everyone here is saying. I could easily be wrong.

Like I said earlier in this thread, I have faith in the staff. They earned my trust the past few years so I'm going with the flow. Hopefully they knock it out of the park with this class.

[LJay]

Geez, step away form the ledge.

[Fake Father Lannon]

Quick fact about Mr. Patton.

Per the TEDTalks Podcast, If you meet a 7ft+ tall man from the USA between 23-40 there is a ~20% chance he plays in the NBA.

So if Patton has a 20% change of playing in the NBA (assuming he reaches 7ft which it seems he will) thats worth rolling the dice.