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NFL Mock Draft 2009 Draft of 2009 Lacks Star Power NFL Draft 2009: Getting Started Super Bowl Well Worth Tuning In For
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Prospects On Center Stage NBA Preview 2008/09: Final Call
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Recruiting At All Levels By Ron Jumper When looking at the landscape of college recruiting, naming the most recent blue-chip recruit is at the tip of everyone’s tongue. It seems to be all anyone can talk about it when it comes to landing that next great talent that will change the game and show us something we’ve never seen before. However, while I understand fan’s fascination, I feel it disregards the majority of what takes place among the rest of the prospects who have worked very hard to become a college athlete, as well as the coaches that recruited them. Unless you signed with Duke, UNC, or UCLA, it seems that very few people pay any attention to it at all. That just doesn’t seem right to the thousands of prospects involved and the coaches recruiting them every year at schools with the spotlight not shining quite so brightly. To help put things in perspective, I go back to my playing days and look at how hard our coaching staff worked at finding players. I went to a Division III liberal arts college in Maryland. That means no scholarships and tough academic requirements. My school cost just under $40,000 a year to attend and required a minimum of 27 on the ACT just to get in, much less be on any kind of academic scholarship. Imagine how tough it is as a coach to find players that can afford the tuition, meet the academic requirements, and have the skills to play even at a small DIII college. Now that I’ve enlightened you with how hard it was for my school’s coaching staff to find players and compete at the DIII level, I wanted to take it a step further. I had the idea of interviewing Harvard assistant coach Will Wade about the exhausting process of finding DI prospects with even stiffer academic requirements and even more expensive yearly tuition to be accepted into Harvard. Coach Wade was in Conway, Arkansas during April to watch an AAU tournament taking place. My former AAU team, the Arkansas Rockets, was playing in the tournament. I ran into him at a local restaurant in Conway, as he was excited to be able to have sweet tea while he was back down in the South (he was born originally in Tennessee). We began to converse a little bit about the tournament going on. Of all the players throughout the tournament, there were only a small handful of prospects that he was even interested in because he knew the rest didn’t have a realistic shot of being able to meet academic requirements. Fortunately, because he is a nice guy, he also agreed to do an interview and let me pick his brain a little bit more so all of my readers can understand the process of coaching in the Ivy League at a school such as Harvard. Here goes: RJ: Everyone knows Harvard is as good as it gets in terms of academics, but give people a little insight into the history of Harvard athletics, especially the basketball program. WW: The history of Harvard basketball has not been very good. We have never won the Ivy League and haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since the 50’s. We have the longest current streak between NCAA tournament berths in the country. We do not look at this as a negative necessarily because this presents a great opportunity for someone to leave their mark on our program. At Harvard, a lot of things have been accomplished obviously, but for some reason they have not been able to crack the basketball puzzle and we are here to do that. The support that Harvard has given us administratively has been tremendous and from our president on down they are committed to helping us make history! Overall, our athletics department is very strong as we compete in 41 sports, more than any other school in the country. We consistently win the most Ivy League titles each season and compete on a national level for championships in many sports. This past season our football team went undefeated in Ivy League play and our women’s hockey team made it to the Frozen 4, just to name a few. RJ: Before you can even evaluate a player on his athletic ability, what is the process like in finding kids capable of actually attending Harvard? WW: The process, before a live evaluation, is very tedious but saves a ton of time on the back end ensuring that we do not recruit players who will not get in to school. We must speak with the high school coach, guidance counselor, principal, etc. to gather as much academic information as possible on the player. We then try to get some tape as well. After we have a transcript, test scores, and idea on his character then we will watch the tape. If we like what we see on tape, the live evaluation will occur as we will go to the school or AAU tournament to watch them play. At the school, we will once again meet with all of the academic people necessary to ensure he has a reasonable chance to be admitted. If all of those pieces fit, we then begin communication with our admissions office on the student-athlete. RJ: When watching a player on tape or in person, what is the first thing you look for in determining whether he is someone you want to recruit? WW: The 1st thing I look for is court presence and body language. I want to see how a player interacts with his team, coach, etc. I think this is a critical aspect of recruiting that often goes overlooked. After watching his actions then you look for the obvious things: feel for the game, skill level, quickness, athletic ability, style of play, etc. I want players who are a great fit for our system and what we do. RJ: Last season, your team had players from 8 different states and even one player from Germany. Being from Tennessee and having worked at various schools around the country, do you feel it is an advantage for you when talking to recruits because you have lived in multiple areas of the country? WW: Absolutely, as we recruit on a national level and I recruit a lot of players in past areas where I have lived. Harvard is such an attractive name that we can go anywhere in the world to recruit and people have heard of our school. Having been in different areas of the country, I have numerous contacts in a lot of areas that help me to identify players and get background information on them in terms of their academics. Having said that, another aspect is we have to be willing to go to those areas to recruit. As a staff at Harvard, we are committed to finding the best student-athletes in the country and bringing them to our admissions office, whether they are in Pocatello, Idaho or the Deep South. Recruiting on a national level has many advantages and allows me as an assistant coach to make an impression on people all over the country, which will serve me better as I progress in my career. RJ: With your top 5 scorers coming back and best incoming class in some time, is there reason to be optimistic despite being 8-22 last season? WW: No doubt. We are very excited about next season as we are adding a talented group of new players to a solid nucleus we have in place. We return 2 post players who averaged over 10 points a game and a solid group of guards led by Jeremy Lin who was a 2nd team All Ivy player. Our recruiting class will add to this solid group and help us solidify some depth issues this coming season. We will be ready to compete for Ivy League championships and make history here at Harvard in the next few seasons. I would have to agree that, despite the added degree of difficulty, Harvard basketball is on the way up and should continue to blossom into more wins and postseason success. I look at their incoming freshman and I see the most talented group of freshman to enter the Ivy League in some time, not just at Harvard. With their top 5 scorers coming back, those depth issues Coach Wade discussed should be a thing of the past. With the great competitive balance spread throughout college basketball, you can never rule out someone new making a run at their conference or, perhaps, more. So why not Harvard? May 5, 2008 |
| NCAA Football | |
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Be Careful What You Wish For
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| NCAA Basketball | |
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Jumpology: My Bracket Jumpology: Scouting The Heavyweights Jumpology: Reviewing The Bracket
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