Hoopraker

The ink’s dry on the November letters of intent for the high schoolers fortunate enough to have been offered Division I basketball scholarships. Lost in the parsing of recruiting classes, the accolades of team rankings, and the rating of players with “stars” is an unseemly recruiting trend: A handful of coaches aggressively pursue verbal commitments from ninth, and in some cases, eighth graders. As the competitive dust settles, we must ask: When is a kid simply too young to be subjected to a coach’s hard sell and push for a verbal commitment?

Preemptive Recruiting

After a summer camp in Atlanta, Georgia in the summer of 2004, an eighth grader caught the eye of Ohio State’s Thad Matta. BJ Mullens, who later in 2004 would just begin his freshmen year at World Harvest Prep in Columbus, Ohio, showed Matta the potential to one day become one a five star recruit. Despite being 12 or 13 years old (Mullens birthday is a closely guarded mystery), it was no mystersy that Mullens stood a legit 6′10″. After the camp, Matta didn’t hesitate and offered the Middle School graduate a full ride college scholarship to Mullens. Mullens accepted and became Matta’s first recruit at Ohio State before he began his 9th grade classes.

Getting his foot in the door early, very early, before Tom Izzo, Roy Williams and even Kevin Sampson, is a technique being used with alarming and increasing frequency by Matta. In Ohio State’s 2010 recruiting class, four recruits were offered scholarships and subsequently verbally committed, between their freshmen and sophomore years. These high schoolers are Trae Golden, Jared Sullinger, DeShaun Thomas and Cameron Wright.

All labeled five-star recruits as freshmen, at the behest of Matta and his assistants, these kids short-circuited their college search before any of them played a game as a sophomore let alone before they took the PSAT. The commitment by Sullinger, being the little brother of former Buckeye JJ Sullinger, can perhaps be rationalized if it was an isolated incident, which it is not.

Ultimately, how competent is an athletically-gifted child to make a college commitment, and to a major college athletic program where millions of dollars hang in the balance. It’s unsettling when one recognizes that the recruitment of children is not only be more commonplace, it’s progressing unquestioned by University adminstrators, the NCAA and the Conference hierarchy.

Looking for an Edge

The underbelly of recruiting is one peppered with pot marks of coaches acting as used car salesmen. Where college basketball has become undeniably big business, much is on the line, the schools, the players, and the coaches personally. There’s no doubt the recruitment of talented players is highly competitive.

Perhaps Matta, in his efforts to establish Ohio State as a basketball program on par with North Carolina and Duke, believes he needs to take a different tack. He feels he needs to recruit the best players before Roy Williams and Coach K among others get involved. To that end, Matta is dipping deep into the well, securing recruiting classes composed of high school freshmen.

Collegiate basketball’s governing bodies, the NCAA and the respective Conferences, should not condone by their silence the youth trend by coaches. According to Scout.com, 15 of the top 100 high school sophomores have already made verbal commitments, with the Buckeyes leading the pack at four followed by Billy Gillispie and Kentucky. While it’s true the verbals are technically non-binding, the peer pressure not to mention institutional pressure is tangible and intense, more so when the commitment comes from a group and not one player.
What’s the Pitch

What are these coaches saying to these kids to secure the verbal commitment? At the very least, an inquiry needs to be initiated as to motivation and the method of the coaches who give a high pressure sell to a high school freshman. In a recruiting environment where so much glad-handling is done on the phone, in hallways of gyms, and in the solitude of the living room, the Big Ten and the NCAA has an obligation to ask what is being said to these freshmen and whether the pitch is over the top: “Commit to us now young 13 year old or we’re moving done the five-star list.” The hard sell upon a kid fresh out of junior high by a self-interested millionare coach is a mismatch waiting to happen.

Et Tu Bruce

At the moment, Illinois is only school in the Big Ten other than Ohio State to garner a verbal commitment for a freshman or sophomore: Jereme Richmond committed as a freshman. In the wake of the Eric Gordon reversal of fortune, perhaps this commitment can be chalked as isolated instance of Chicago kid wanting to play for Illinois. Nevertheless, it’s worth an observation and if not an aberration, it’s more justification for to address the contagious effect of youth movement recruiting.

Something Fishy’s Going On

There is no coincidence in the repeated offer and acceptance of athletic scholarships to high school freshmen and in some cases, eighth graders. Regrettably, Ohio State’s Thad Matta has pioneered this unseemly area of recruitment, one hopefully his Big Ten brethren will forsake.

In an era were the NCAA rules monitor how many phone calls to a recruit a coach can make and where they’re allowed eat dinner, it would be wise to consider a rule shielding what remains of the innocence of their youth. Certainly, it’s not too much to ask that a coach forsake the offer of a scholarship until a player reaches his junior year when like many of their less physically gifted classmates, the student-athelete can more competently choose a college based upon their best interests.

Posted by TD Lawlor on Thursday, December 27th, 2007 at 8:43 am.