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YOUNGER: Some recruits aren't even in high school
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Published: November 3, 2008
Updated: 11/03/2008 12:05 am
Every ACC basketball coach wants to find the best players quickly and finish his recruiting year fast to stay ahead of the competition.
But to take a commitment from an eighth-grader, as Kentucky did in April?
That's a decision that ACC men's coaches are overwhelmingly against.
Only two of the 12 ACC coaches said that they would be willing to accept a commitment from a player who is 14, the normal age for an eighth-grader. And one, Dave Leitao of Virginia, said that college projections for the player would have to be all but perfect for him to feel that the move was right for all concerned.
Coach Mike Krzyzewski of Duke summed up the thoughts of the coaches opposed to recruiting a player who has not yet reached high school. Krzyzewski has accepted the commitment of a 10th-grader, former Duke player DeMarcus Nelson. But when asked if he would take a commitment from an eighth-grader, Krzyzewski responded with a quick and firm "no."
"We'd never take an eighth-grader," Krzyzewski said. "No way. There's no way that's going to happen. I would not do that, but Duke should not allow me to do it."
The ACC coaches didn't criticize Kentucky's Billy Gillespie, saying they understand that a coach must build his program the way he sees fit. They all realize that if the commitment works out, that if Michael Avery, now a 6-4 ninth-grader in Encino, Calif., becomes a great player, Gillespie will have outsmarted everyone.
ACC coaches consider counting on a player not yet in high school to be too much of a gamble. And for Dino Gaudio of Wake Forest and Seth Greenberg of Virginia Tech, the Kentucky commitment sums up just about everything that is wrong in basketball recruiting today.
"It's spinning a little out of control," Gaudio said. "It really is. It's spinning out of control."
Added Greenberg: "Our business is crazy right now. Just everything that's going on in our business is nutty. You can commit because it's not binding on either side. The whole business is on fast-forward, and I'm not sure that's a good thing."
Coach Leonard Hamilton of Florida State sees nothing wrong with Kentucky's decision, given that commitments are nonbinding. Hamilton said he would take an eighth-grader if he thought that the player could help FSU.
"I would take a commitment from a youngster whenever I could get one," Hamilton said. "It's their right to make the decision if it's best for them."
Too much risk
Recruiting is a risky business at best. The ACC coaches who wouldn't take a commitment from an eighth-grader cited myriad reasons.
The player might look good now. His jump shot or ball-handling might be superb. But how will he play four years later? Will all aspects of his game improve? Will he mature emotionally and physically? Will he be able to handle the academic load at college and ACC basketball?
Coach Al Skinner of Boston College isn't willing to take such a gamble, and has personal experience to back his stance.
"There have been some underclassmen that I have liked when they were sophomores, but when they became seniors they hadn't really improved," Skinner said. "I had to back off and say, ‘I'm sorry, but your improvement hasn't been what I thought it would be to allow you to compete at this level.'
"I think there's plenty of time for (making a decision). If a young man has an affection for my university and I have an affection for him, we'll watch him progress to see if he can continue to grow and get better and be successful here, and if he does, great, he's welcome into my program.
"If he doesn't, at least you don't have the feeling of disappointment like you failed because I had to say no or rescind the scholarship."
Coach Frank Haith of Miami was known as a top recruiter when he was working his way up as an assistant. His eye for talent sees only so much, though, and he wonders how much an eighth-grader will improve before reaching college.
"I don't know that you can tell that early," Haith said. "That's me; I know I can't. Maybe some other guys can but I can't."
Coach Gary Williams of Maryland said he has never taken a commitment from a player younger than a junior. Williams wonders how much pressure an eighth-grader would be under after committing to a national power and what crowd abuse he might have to endure on a bad day.
"I don't think anybody should take a commitment that early; I'm very strong about that," Williams said. "It doesn't do anyone any good. I played eighth-grade basketball. The best player on our team in the eighth grade couldn't make the varsity by the time he was a sophomore.
"To say that you can predict, I don't care how good he is right now. If the kid doesn't grow or his interests change, so many things can happen. Then all of a sudden you tell the kid, ‘Well, that commitment, we're not going to honor it with a scholarship.' That's not right. And the kid might change in his attitude where he wants to go school even if he does develop."
Too much fuss?
Hamilton sees the situation differently. Major League Baseball and professional hockey often draft teenagers (although none as young as 14). Pro tennis and golf have allowed competitors barely into their teens to play.
If those athletes can decide to play at a high level, why can't a 14-year-old decide where he wants to play college basketball?
"So how are we going to tell a kid he can't make a commitment when he really doesn't have to worry about it for two or three years," Hamilton said. "He still has an opportunity to change his mind. It's not like anybody's putting him in jail or putting handcuffs on him. He's not a hardship on the college. I don't even know what's all the fuss."
Hamilton said that the player can talk over the decision with his parents and his coach before deciding to commit at 14. And that's what happened with Avery. His father, Howard, who has a law practice in California, said that the family thought about the decision and decided that the time was right.
Howard Avery said that he and his son weren't interested in receiving 200 scholarship offers. They were looking for only one, from one of the country's best programs. Kentucky fit their needs.
"If his parents don't want him to make the decision, they don't have to," Hamilton said. "Sometimes as coaches, we have a tendency that if we don't have the good fortune to get the commitment, we don't think it's right. If you're on the receiving end of an outstanding player, sometimes it's not so bad.
"This is a commitment. It's not signing a scholarship. He has three or four years (left) and has the right to change his mind. There are some (brilliant) kids who graduate high school at that age and move on. I'd have a problem if you told me the kid was going to finish high school at 13 or 14 years old and go to college."
NABC has issues, too
The ACC coaches opposed to taking commitments from eighth-graders aren't the only ones with concerns. The National Association of Basketball Coaches sent e-mails and letters to college coaches around the country in June, asking them to refrain from accepting commitments from players still in middle school or junior-high school.
The NABC would prefer that coaches take commitments only from players who have completed their sophomore years of high school.
"I agree with that 100 percent," Gaudio said. "I think we need to stay out of the middle schools. The process used to be one of evaluating young men. We're talking about an eighth-grader.
"We're talking about a young man who has not taken a single high-school academic course. Like so many schools in the ACC, Wake Forest is all about higher education. We would like to see how a young man does in his high school before we can determine whether he could be successful at Wake Forest."
Greenberg has the same worries.
"It's hard to project a junior, let alone an eighth-grader," Greenberg said. "Obviously there's a rare instance. So many things change. We're big on ‘who is he?' I don't know if an eighth-grader even knows who he is."
There are only three known instances of scholarship offers to eighth-graders in the last three years -- Tim Floyd of Southern California extended such offers in 2006 and 2007 -- but Coach Paul Hewitt of Georgia Tech isn't sure that all coaches will honor the NABC request.
"It's not going to stop," Hewitt said. "It's what the marketplace has produced. It's the same in tennis and golf. All parents are pushing their kids to become the next phenom, and we as coaches just react to it.
"I don't think it's a good thing for basketball. It's not a good thing for any sport."
Coach Sidney Lowe of N.C. State needs players to rebuild his old program. He will work hard to find them but won't take a commitment from a player not yet in high school, for fear that the player might change his mind before signing a binding letter-of-intent. Then where would N.C. State be?
"But you know, I think that's just where it's going for coaches," Lowe said. "You see a young man you think is a talent and he's telling you, ‘I want to come, I want to commit now,' and that puts you in tough situation.
"The last thing you want to do is not accept that and then he becomes a junior and you want to get in on him. And he says, ‘Well, I tried to tell you in eighth grade.'
"But I won't go out and look at eighth-graders. Let me put it that way. I'm not looking at eighth-graders. No."
■ Bill Cole can be reached at bcole@wsjournal.com.
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