National Exposure

I've always thought that the most important part of my job is to first, prepare the athletes that play for me to move on to the university level and then second, to help them find a place where they can keep playing and continue their education. Often times I spend much more time helping them move on than I spent recruiting them in the first place! It's a lot of extra work and it's work that many coaches at this level aren't willing to do, but for me the payoff is well worth it. Nobody wants to win more than I do, but helping players get opportunities that didn't exist for them coming out of high school makes a much greater impact on their lives than the 28 wins a year that we average!

Anyway so far this year I have been in contact with nearly 50 four year colleges and universities representing 18 states. Those states include Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Utah, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri, Michigan, Kentucky, Arkansas, New York, North Carolina, and Florida.

With this much national exposure and this many different times zones it seems like I am always on the phone. The result? Once again all of our sophomores (6) are getting basketball scholarships to four year schools!! It's a great time to be a Riverhawk!!

Attitude Is Often The Deciding Factor

Casey O'Toole told me this interesting story at last week's End of the Trail Tournament. Casey was in one of the gyms, along with dozens of university coaches, watching one of the top high school post players on the West Coast. At the beginning of the game the girl was a scoring, rebounding, shot blocking machine who looked like she was having a great time playing with her teammates. Everyone in the gym seemed to nod in agreement that this player was destined for a big time career. Then she missed an easy shot, a teammate didn't see her open in the post, and a ref called her next blocked shot a foul. Casey told me then it was like someone had flipped the switch that controlled her attitude. When everything was going great she was great. Bu twhen things started going bad, this player made everything worse. No longer was she visibly having fun and basking in the competition. Suddenly she was surly and bitchy to the other team, yelled at her own teammates, snarled at the refs, and started to jog up and down the court instead of sprinting as she had been only minutes earlier.

It was at this time, Casey said, that Amy Tucker, Stanford's longtime associate head coach, reached into her bag, pulled out her program and a red pen, and literally crossed this player off of Stanford's recruiting list before getting up and walking out of the gym. Casey and I talked and wondered if this player had any idea, or would ever have any idea, that just a couple of minutes of bad attitude cost her a possible scholarship offer from one of the most prestigious schools and basketball programs in the country.

I'm sure there are some coaches who are willing to overlook the bad attitude because of the talent level and I'm confidant that because she is so good this girl will play somewhere in college. It just won't be at Stanford!

Spring Update

It's been about six weeks since I've written anything and so I apologize to those parents, friends, alumni, etc. who feel like they have been missing out on what's going on with our basketball program. The reason is very simple: RECRUITING!! Unless you've done it it's almost impossible to know just how time consuming the whole process can be!!

We start with a list of approximately 100 names. (Last year, knowing we had to recruit and sign nine new players, our list was closer to 150 names.) We go to at least two high school games a week beginning the first of December until mid March. Some time in January we start contacting these players by phone and begin determining who is interested in playing for us. Those initial phone calls are important because we are looking for a connection; for a certain personality that will undoubtedly fit in with the rest of our team. We definitely want good players but we also want good people! These days text messaging makes it's harder to get to know recruits as quickly as we used to. Texting is a great way to communicate with your friends and family but is very difficult to give and get a great first impression. Can you imagine trying to conduct a job interview through text messaging?

Once we have that first conversation with a potential recruit we contact her once a week as long as we are still interested in each other. Besides calling the players, phone calls are made to parents, high school coaches, club coaches, and counselor's. It's safe to say that it seems like we literally live on the phone all Spring!! Home visits and campus visits give us even more chances to get to know the recruits and to let them get to know our team. Our list eventually dwindles from 100 to 75 to 50 to 25 names. In a perfect world this whole process would be done before the recruits graduate from high school but that's not always the case. Last year, for example, our team wasn't completed until the end of August!!

The time spent this year has been well worth it. We have received two signed Letters of Intent and have verbal commitments from four others. Once all the Letters of Intent are signed we'll list their names and bio information here on the blog. But for now it should be safe to say that it's going to be another fun, exciting, and successful year for Umpqua Basketball!!