Sherrington: Texas provides fertile recruiting grounds

[LA_Mustang]

for basketball.

State's basketball coaches need to do home work

Texas provides fertile recruiting grounds for basketball

10:46 AM CST on Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Coaching update: Tom Penders is back, Billy Gillispie is in the house and despite all appearances SMU hasn't decided to kill track and basketball, too.

Only time will tell how these coaching searches work out. Coaches enter to huzzahs and fanfare and rarely exit in the same fashion, unless you count the parade of lawyers in Penders' escort.

The Big 12 is famous for its quality of coaching, which can be translated any number of ways.

Here's one: They must be coaching, because most of them sure don't recruit.

Caveat: We'll have to reserve judgment on Baylor's Scott Drew, who apparently will be combing exotic locales and is excused from judgment until he ends up with more Brazilians on the end of his bench than West Texans.

Rick Barnes is bucking the trend among the Texas schools, and he's building a pretty good case at that.

T.J. Ford, for example. Not for nothing did they retire his number at Texas. Ford was the most ballyhooed recruit to stay in the state since Larry Johnson almost played at SMU.

Let that sink in a little bit. Fourteen years passed between the Johnson and Ford recruiting classes, and a lot of bad basketball skittered and flopped around in the interim.

Some coaches find it's easier and more profitable to work with great players. Take Mike Krzyzewski at Duke. Best coach going, right?

No arguments here. You'd probably get none from the six McDonald's All-Americans on his bench, either.

Six. Overall, Duke has had 34 Big Macs, and that's not even tops on the hamburger joint's all-time list.

No. 1? North Carolina with 43. Kansas has had 22 over the years and UCLA 21 and Michigan 17.

No. 1 among the state's schools going into this year? Texas, with four.

Ties the Longhorns with Rhode Island.

Arkansas has had 11 Big Macs, and that's more than the rest of the old SWC teams put together.

Maybe you noticed that Arkansas won a few games under Nolan Richardson, too.

Talent helps, especially great talent. Of course, not even a McDonald's All-American guarantees success.

See Glendon Alexander, now committed to Seagoville until 2006.

But prize talent is a good place to start. No, you're not always going to get it around these parts, not when the best kids want to play at schools with a basketball tradition.

But you have to snag a top recruit one every once in a while. Attract a big name, and others tend to follow.

Before Barnes, the only McDonald's All-American in UT history was Kris Clack. Now he's padded the list with Ford, Brian Boddicker and Brad Buckman with three more scheduled, though LaMarcus Aldridge apparently may bypass his fraternity pledge.

You'd have to call the All-Americans a trend, helped no doubt by Texas' performances in the NCAA Tournament.

But let's not just limit this to All-Americans. In last year's NCAA Tournament field, 83 kids had played on Texas high school basketball teams.

And only three teams from Texas were even in the tournament.

Consider this a down year with only 58 Texans in the field. But here's the point: This state has plenty of players to go around.

Certainly not in football numbers. But Mike Kunstadt, guru of TexasHoops.com, says Texas still ranks in the top five basketball recruiting areas, among the likes of California, the New York-New Jersey-Washington D.C. area and the basketball belt between Detroit and Chicago.

How does he make his case? "You'll see 300-plus coaches at a North Texas camp this summer," he said. "And they're coming because there are so many Texas kids."

And it only takes a couple in basketball. Now if Texas coaches can only convince them to stay in the state.

Better start early, Kunstadt says. National recruiters are identifying key players by their sophomore year.

Bob Knight is already doing it at Texas Tech.

Melvin Watkins didn't at Texas A&M.

"One of the concerns at A&M," Kunstadt said, "is that they didn't have enough contact with Texas high school coaches. By the time they got it, kids were already interested in other schools."

So out goes Watkins; in comes Gillispie. "If he does get the job," Kunstadt said, "he'll start bringing in Texas kids and Texas kids that can play."

And if Gillispie and the others don't, kids will keep leaving the state, hang-dog coaches at their heels.

E-mail [email protected]

[LA_Mustang]

"One of the concerns at A&M," Kunstadt said, "is that they didn't have enough contact with Texas high school coaches. By the time they got it, kids were already interested in other schools."

So out goes Watkins; in comes Gillispie. "If he does get the job," Kunstadt said, "he'll start bringing in Texas kids and Texas kids that can play."

And if Gillispie and the others don't, kids will keep leaving the state, hang-dog coaches at their heels.

E-mail [email protected]

[EastStang]

Notice he's talking about the entire state of Texas, not just DFW. Tubbs is a Dallas guy. He also mentioned that it is still behind such recruiting hotbeds as Carolina, Washington DC, NY/NJ, Detroit and Chicago. Clearly Roberts has gleened the fields of Carolina, Detroit and Chicago in his coaching stops. SMU used to be a favorite stop for Illini looking for warm weather.

[DickerJames]

[Ford was the most ballyhooed recruit to stay in the state since Larry Johnson almost played at SMU.]

I have been mad for years about the Larry Johnson fiasco, but the Bliss scandal at Baylor made me see the light. He obviously didn't run a clean program, and there is no telling what he was promissing Larry to get him to sign.