College coaches weigh in on the NCAA’s new recruiting calendar

Coaches will be watching more high school ball in June and less club ball in July.

SHARE College coaches weigh in on the NCAA’s new recruiting calendar
Loyola coach Porter Moser directs his team.

Loyola coach Porter Moser directs his team.

AP Photo/Matt Marton

Everyone will have a better feel in a little over a month, but the new, revamped recruiting and evaluation calendar still has more questions than answers right now. 

“I want to see how I like it,” says Loyola head coach Porter Moser of the new recruiting and evaluation model. “It’s hard to evaluate something when you haven’t gone through it yet.”

Butler head coach LaVall Jordan agrees. He is taking a wait-and-see approach as June and July play out.

“I don’t think we know yet how it’s going to be,” says Jordan. “We need to go through it, make note of what we like, what we would like changed, get thoughts and feedback from the right people.”

However, there were several coaches who had plenty to say off the record but not wanting to kill the new order of business entirely before going through it. Most of those concerns centered around the July camp structure and what appears to be a little less of an opportunity to evaluate.

All of the significant changes come in light of a new NCAA reform amid recruiting concerns in the sport.

The old July

Gone is the three-week gauntlet of club basketball in July where college coaches criss-crossed the country evaluating the AAU basketball scene in search of high school basketball talent. In the recent past, there were four-day sprints for coaches and players alike. 

There were three consecutive weekends in July to evaluate talent, starting on Wednesday night and concluding on Sunday night before taking two days off and getting right back at it the next Wednesday night.

That model, however, also brought questions, including the consensus that it was too much and that by the final weekend of July the players were physically exhausted and mental focuswas lost. 

The new July

July has now been relegated to one club basketball weekend, which is set for July 10-14, followed by regional satellite camps. The Midwest regional camps, one of four held throughout the country, will be in Champaign July 23-25 and July 26-28.

That lone club basketball weekend in July will be a doozy as the shoe-sponsored events, highlighted by the prestigious Peach Jam to close out the Nike EYBL circuit, will take center stage. This will undoubtedly be the most influential weekend of the year as far as evaluating the best of the best in high school basketball.

There are few, if any, people in the game that’s very excited about the regional satellite camps. There were immediate complaints when the new format was announced and the grumblings have only grown louder.

The roll-out has hardly been helpful. The invitation process to the camps was vague, loose and confusing. The structure of the camps appears to be the despised cattle call of a wide-range of prospects thrown together to play for a few days. There are legitimate concerns how much value coaches will get from evaluating these camps. 

There is no ultimate prize, just a string of disconnected drills and individual games with no meaning, structure, or goal other than to play for ones self and do something individually to catch the eye of a college coach. 

A new June

What has arrived are two “live” weekends in June, where college coaches will have the chance to evaluate players with their respective high school teams. 

This new evaluation period begins this weekend with a few monster events in Illinois, including the Riverside-Brookfield Shootout beginning this Friday. The R-B Shootout has been a staple of summer basketball in recent years in Illinois. This year’s event has expanded to 64 teams. 

In addition, there are “live” events at Willowbrook, Zion-Benton and Rockford this weekend followed by the Ridgewood Shootout and another event in Rockford next weekend. 

The questions and concerns

The early opinions of the new calendar have not been overly favorable, though the biggest complaint is simple and fair: College coaches having a lack of time to evaluate during their offseason. 

Evaluating prospects during the actual basketball season in the winter has become more and more challenging for college coaches with the focus on its own season and team being so intense. Thus, making the most of offseason recruiting portion of the calendar in imperative, but in a lot of ways they’ve been stripped of that opportunity. 

“There is a lot less of an opportunity to evaluate and that’s a concern,” says Valparaiso head coach Matt Lottich. “Taking away those opportunities to evaluate the circuit in July does make things more challenging.”

Due to the way the calendar fell this past spring with Easter, there was just one “live” weekend in the spring for college coaches to get out and evaluate prospects. That’s approximately one 48-hour period. 

The high school shootouts in June are also approximately 48 hours, and there are many states that chose not to even participate during the June evaluation period. 

With only one club weekend in July, followed by a very suspect evaluation tool with the satellite camps, this is arguably the fewest days college coaches will have to evaluate prospective players ever, especially considering the quality of the evaluations.

“The biggest concern is the reduction in being able to evaluate non-scholastic events,” says Tavaras Hardy, the former Northwestern assistant coach and current head coach at Loyola-Maryland. “I really think you are unable to get the same type of evaluation in a camp setting and camp environment.”

Most coaches are in agreement that they are intrigued to see some of these players with their high school teams in June. Coaches all seem to be excited about evaluating something “different.” 

“I do really like getting out and seeing players with their high school team,” says Moser. “I am looking forward to it. I like watching them with their high school team, and I also like watching them with their AAU team.”

Lottich, who admits there is still a little bit of an unknown heading into this, does like the idea of seeing players in a different light and setting.

“I do like watching individual players with their high school team, seeing them as the best player, being the leader of their team and how they react and respond to that,” says Lottich. “I’m excited to see them play with their high school team.”

Adds Hardy, “Being able to see them in a different setting will be useful from an evaluation standpoint. 

Beginning Friday night at Riverside-Brookfield and other live events in the Chicago area, college coaches will get their chance.

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