College
Eyes on the game, Part III: Feeling the pinch
By Paul Dehner Jr., CNATI.com Posted May 27, 2010 8:00 AM ET
This is the third of a four-part series viewing the central off-the-court issues facing the game of college basketball through the eyes of local college coaches forming one of the nation's most successful areas. The series will run every Thursday through June 3. Next week will focus on how Xavier's Chris Mack and UC's Mick Cronin view the strengths and weaknesses of their teams at this point in the offseason.
A misconception exists of coaches sitting in a smoky, dark room after an AAU tournament tossing duffel bags of unmarked, non-sequential bills at top recruits like a bad sequel to Blue Chips.
Local coaches insist the dirty underworld of college basketball isn't that. In fact, very little dirt remains at all. But to claim cheating and the payment of recruits doesn't exist would be foolish.
"It has become pretty melodramatic and it is perpetuated by a lot of myths, but it goes on," Mick Cronin said. "It does go on."
To combat the underhanded few programs illegally positioning themselves for the next top recruit, the NCAA over recent years placed increasingly tighter limits on the recruiting periods. In particular, tightening contact in the summer AAU months.
The NCAA sought more contact under the controlled supervision of high school coaches and parents and less when intertwined in the sometimes ugly world of shoe-company powered AAU circuit.
For Xavier's Chris Mack, this solution serves as more of a problem.
Not only a problem, it's defeating the purpose.
"It is unfortunate, but the NCAA puts in more and more rules every year that we have to follow," Mack said. "The crazy thing is when you don't follow those rules or when you cheat, it is more advantageous to have more rules in place. It really hurts the people that are trying to do it the right way."
The right way as long as Cronin has been blazing recruiting trails was to outwork his competition. He recalls long nights spent sitting up with AAU and high school coaches and countless dinners spent building relationships with potential players and their families.
Those extra efforts -- and not necessarily watching summer basketball -- were how Cronin developed the reputation of a master recruiter. Six of his classes have been ranked in the Top 10 by national publications and he recruited eight NBA draft picks during his career.
Still, each year, the NCAA chips away at the soul of his recruiting mindset.
"For a guy like (28-year-old UC Director of Student Athlete Development) Chris Shumate on my staff or younger guys in the business getting on the road, how do you develop relationships?" Cronin said. "The rules are now you can't talk to the coach in the summer. They have eliminated April and there used to be September was AAU tournaments. If you were willing to put the time in you could develop relationships. You could outwork people. It is getting harder and harder to outwork people and develop relationships."
In the eyes of local coaches, limiting relationships opens up a myriad of problems the NCAA was hoping to curtail. It empowers internet recruiting services. Restrictions lend an advantage to programs with seemingly bottomless budgets to fly coaches to and from high school gyms rather than viewing events with all the prospects in one place.
Coaches know less about the players they invest their futures in now than ever before.
Dayton's Brian Gregory adjusts by spending his time collecting as much periphery information as possible. The method pales in comparison to a day spent learning about a recruit while with him, but very little about the current process would be considered ideal.
"That's why doing the research around those players is so important now," Gregory said. "Try to get guys on campus as much as you can, before either games or on unofficial visits and so forth. You have to keep working, that is the most important thing. Gene Keady said it best: recruiting is like shaving, if you don't do it every day you end up looking like a bum.
"I think some of the rules are tremendous; some of changes have been great. My thing with that stuff is if everybody has the same amount of days out, that's fair and you just have to make it work with what you got."
What they have is an onus placed on recruiting during the season. For all but five days between Oct. 6 and March 30 coaches are allowed to evaluate and make visits to official high school functions - games, practices, tournaments, etc.
Placing so many important recruiting days during months where coaches are preparing their teams for games causes a dilemma. How much do you focus on solidifying the future at risk of compromising the present?
Mack says it isn't much of a dilemma for him at all, but is frustrating to know the game's governing body is forcing him to make that decision.
"For me, and for us at Xavier, our team is the most important thing during our season," he said. "I don't want Jamel McLean catching coach running out of practice at the very end to go catch a high school game in Indianapolis. What does that say to him? For us, it's more beneficial and conducive to recruit in the offseason and those are the days that are getting more and more restricted - which I think is ludicrous, but I don't set the rules."
Categories: College, Featured Stories, Features, Features, Men's Basketball, Men's Basketball, University of Cincinnati Bearcats, Xavier Musketeers
Tags: Bearcats, Brian Gregory, Chris Mack, Flyers, Mick Cronin, Musketeers
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Great Game!!!
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