New Rules To Alter Recruiting Efforts Area Basketball Coaches Fear Changes

Say goodbye to summer.

Not the one full of beach balls and sun-burned backs.

No, say goodbye to the summer of packed gyms, traveling players, greedy and shady AAU coaches like Myron Piggie, the Big Time Tournament, the ABCD Camp, the Pump Tournament, road-weary Division I coaches and influential sneaker representatives.

And good riddance, says the NCAA.

But in avoiding one potential crisis the NCAA may have created another for the have-nots in college basketball.

Recently the Division I Board of Directors (a group of college presidents) approved a measure to cut back summer recruiting. The upcoming summer will be the final one in which coaches are allowed 24 straight days to recruit. The new model allows coaches to be out recruiting for 14 days, seven days on the road, followed by a 10-day dead period, with another seven days on the road to follow.

A new system to abolish all summer recruiting could be in place by the summer of 2002.

If that happens, area colleges will have to come up with a new system to get players.

“It’s really going to hurt us,” said Washington State’s Paul Graham. “In Vegas (at the Big Time Tournament) we could see just about every kid in the country. You are in the gym from 8 a.m. to midnight watching players.

“During the (school) year I can’t go out and go to everybody’s practice,” he continued. “Just to see one kid practice it takes three days from where we are. And to do that during the year takes away my time from the kids who I have made a commitment to coach that are already in the program.”

“If you are going to do that (require all recruiting to take place during the academic year), you are going to have less supervision of the kids already in the program as far as academics and a variety of things,” added Idaho coach David Farrar.

Area coaches do agree that something has to be done about the summer and the influence of AAU coaches and shoe companies.

“A lot of the summer is redundant,’ said Gonzaga’s Mark Few. “You see the same kids over and over and by the end of it the players are tired and the games aren’t very good. You are just there babysitting the player you want.

“I would love to see something done,” he continued. “But this is a little bit like a tax structure; the people are already ahead of you finding all the loopholes.”

The fear is that tournaments could be moved from the summer to the school year. This could set up a scenario where AAU teams are in direct competition with high school teams for players.

But the more immediate fear for area coaches is finding enough money and time to stay competitive in recruiting when the summer period is gone.

“It’s not a rule that hampers the upper level of college basketball,” said Farrar. “The further down the food chain you go, the more it hurts.”

Take a school like UCLA. Not only does it have a firmly established basketball program that sells itself, it is also located in a major metropolitan area. So it has a huge talent base to choose from. It also has cheap and frequent flights to places around the country from a variety of airports.

The Moscow-Pullman airport is serviced by one airline and has a handful of outbound flights every day.

“You’re at DePaul you just go to Midway, hop on the plane and it doesn’t cost anything,” said Graham. “This (the new recruiting regulations) just lets the rich get richer.”

Those are the same sentiments being echoed through college basketball at the moment. The National Association of Basketball Coaches has scheduled a meeting in June to respond to the NCAA’s decision to abolish summer recruiting. Many feel that getting rid of the early signing period in November may be one measure to counteract the effects of the new summer recruiting regulations.

Area schools and most of the other 300-plus Division I programs use the summer to evaluate seniors-to-be. These players are targeted and then recruited throughout the school year. Some sign early, but many more wait until the spring to sign.

While that is the norm for average programs, the powerhouse programs operate at a different level. A school like North Carolina identifies its players early and signs most, if not all, of its recruits in the early period. This allows them to move on to the juniors and sophomores during the school year, therefore getting a jump on the competition.

The summer for a school like UNC has become a time to perhaps spy someone they missed during the year.

“You’ve got the Morrison kid (Lake Washington guard Brian Morrison) going to Carolina,” said Eastern Washington coach Ray Giacoletti. “They would have never seen him if it weren’t for the summer.”

So had it not been for the summer, Morrison may have been signed by a Pacific Northwest school rather than an East Coast power. And, according to Giacoletti, this may be one positive that comes out of the new regulations.

“We are in an area where there are good basketball players,” he said. “And with all the exposure (of summer) so many different people get into Washington.

Without summer tournaments, Pacific Northwest coaches would have an early jump on identifying these kids, and not as much competition to keep them in the Pacific Northwest.

But while Gonzaga has used Pacific Northwest players to make deep runs into the NCAA Tournament the past two years, Graham said he cannot rely solely on players from this area.

“I’ve got to go to more places than Seattle,” he said. “I’ve got to see players from L.A. and players from other places.”

The problem is, without a summer recruiting period, Graham and other area coaches may never have the opportunity to see those players.