Has Baylor's recruiting fallen off?

[True Colors]

Baylor fan here......

Over the years we have gotten some awesome individual recruits. We have even had some awesome classes. I think that we had the #1 ranked class in the nation a couple of times(or close to it).

However, even despite our success on the court, our recruiting classes have not been ranked super high every year. From that standpoint we have been somewhat inconsistent.

There are probably a couple of main reasons for this.

First and foremost, the demands that are put on our players by our head coach are extremely high. Our fans all love Coach Mulkey, and she is amazing. But there are some recruits out there who are afraid of the tremendous amount of work that she requires. Mulkey demands extreme effort on the court and she also requires her players to go to class and to stay out of trouble off the court. When you add everything up it is a lot of commitment. Mulkey is a super tough woman. Some people can handle that, some cannot.

Also, it can sometimes be tough to recruit certain positions when you already have a lot of talent on your roster to begin with. In particular, I am thinking of point guard and post. We have Odyssey Sims and Brittney Griner. Both of them had sensational freshman seasons(both were national frosh of the year) and both are going to be around for a while. Prospective recruits do look at depth charts.

Mulkey does like to recruit the top ranked recruits, and we were in on several of them this year, but she is also fine taking players who do not have all the accolades and building them up in her system. Back when we won the national championship a few years ago, most of the players on that team were not highly regarded. In fact, almost none of them were the big name, 5 star types. But we still won the title game in blowout fashion.

Hopefully we can win another national championship this year and we can reinforce our ability to recruit more of the really highly ranked prospects.

TC

 

[EricLA]

thanks for the heads up from a true Baylor fan. do you know what kids you are still recruiting from 2012? or what kids in 2013 are being focused on?

 

[Outside Shot]

It's still astounding to me that UConn can go into Texas and pluck one of the very best players out of there. There are a lot of good choices in Texas and between here and there.

One problem will be that Griner will be a very tough act to follow when it comes to recruiting. Where do you find another one? Baylor got some recruiting bump when they hired a coach from a prominent Texas AAU program, which I heard didn't make Pat too happy. I think that was around the same time that Mulkey's daughter was playing on the AAU team with Griner and/or Sims (I can't exactly remember). So Baylor had a few connections work in their favor. Clearly they're riding high right now and maybe they can capitalize on the momentum.

 

[Icebear]

It will only be worse when Griner returns to Texas and tells everyone how great it was to play for Geno. Hee, hee, hee.

 

[RoyDodger]

It's still astounding to me that UConn can go into Texas and pluck one of the very best players out of there. There are a lot of good choices in Texas and between here and there.

One problem will be that Griner will be a very tough act to follow when it comes to recruiting. Where do you find another one? Baylor got some recruiting bump when they hired a coach from a prominent Texas AAU program, which I heard didn't make Pat too happy. I think that was around the same time that Mulkey's daughter was playing on the AAU team with Griner and/or Sims (I can't exactly remember). So Baylor had a few connections work in their favor. Clearly they're riding high right now and maybe they can capitalize on the momentum.

Why do you assume that a player is automatically likely to stay in their home state? Some kids want to explore other places and some are attracted to a particular college for a particular reason. From what I've heard, Storrs isn't the most exciting place in the world, but for a female basketball player, it's Times Square.

 

[EricLA]

Why do you assume that a player is automatically likely to stay in their home state? Some kids want to explore other places and some are attracted to a particular college for a particular reason. From what I've heard, Storrs isn't the most exciting place in the world, but for a female basketball player, it's Times Square.

very true. some kids have wanderlust at an early age and like to travel far away for college. others know that they will have plenty of time to travel after they graduate, and prefer to stay semi close to home for whatever reason, partly to be close to family and partly so family can come see them easily.

one of the biggest ways a coach can show interest is by physically showing up at the recruits' high school games, whether it's the HC or an assistant. recruiting in state kids gives the local school a big advantage because even during "quiet periods" where coaches can't actually call or contact, a coach could still go to "watch" a game. you know the kid is well aware of who is in the stands.

so for a lot of reasons, good in state programs have an innate advantage over schools who recruit kids from far away. Xy McDaniel, for example, is receiving pressure of varying sorts to stay close to home and attend South Carolina. at least that's what we read. and schools in the states for top kids really want to keep them close to home for lots of reasons.

so it's not that people are "assuming" these kids are more likely to stay in their home states, but there is often family and external pressure not to mention easy access from the coaches of local program recruiting them.

UCONN has not traditionally mined the talent rich pool of players from Texas. we've gone after a few, but Jefferson is the first big time recruit to come to Storrs from the big state. and we hope the conduit continues as Breanna Turner is from Texas as well...

 

[True Colors]

To be honest with you I do not know for sure which recruits Baylor is mainly going after for 2012 or 2013. I know that Alexis Prince is supposed to be here soon but I have not checked lately where we stand with the others.

For those of you saying that we will fall apart after Griner leaves.....that is not going to happen. It is true that Griner will be tough to replace, but as long as Kim Mulkey is here we will never be terrible.

Obviously Moriah Jefferson was a tremendous pickup for you. Our fans thought that we had a good chance with her. She fits the profile of what Baylor likes to recruit. She is a home school kid and she lives very close to our campus(just 75 miles straight up the interstate). She could have stayed near her family and they could have come to see her play literally every single home game. But you cannot blame any kid for choosing such a prestigious program as Uconn. And as someone mentioned, some kids PREFER to get away from home and see new things.

We were really hoping to get Jefferson and Alexis Jones. But unfortunately we did not get either one of them.

TC

 

[EricLA]

well any recruits you can land that tennessee was going after is fine with me!!!

 

[Outside Shot]

Certainly one size doesn't fit all, but I feel pretty sure that most recruits choose a school that allows their family a reasonable chance to travel to see them on a regular basis.
Obviously there are plenty of examples of kids who didn't follow that plan.

 

[RoyDodger]

Certainly one size doesn't fit all, but I feel pretty sure that most recruits choose a school that allows their family a reasonable chance to travel to see them on a regular basis.
Obviously there are plenty of examples of kids who didn't follow that plan.

Seems to me that if college athletes stayed reasonably near home most of the time, UConn wouldn't have much of a team. Think Diana Taurasi and Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis from California (also Lauren Engeln), Renee Montgomery from West Virginia, Maya Moore from Georgia, Kelly Faris from Indiana, and Tiffany Hayes from Florida, to name just a few. Of course, there's also the local girls, such as Sue Bird, Tina Charles, and Stefanie Dolson from NYC or NY State, and Maria Conlon and Heather Buck from CT. But in the time I've followed the Huskies, most of the players have come quite a distance. And it's because, as Geno has said, they want to come to UConn. I imagine that the reason Moriah Jefferson decided on UConn.

 

[Icebear]

Certainly one size doesn't fit all, but I feel pretty sure that most recruits choose a school that allows their family a reasonable chance to travel to see them on a regular basis.
Obviously there are plenty of examples of kids who didn't follow that plan.

The higher the quality and the higher their aspirations the less likely that is to be the dominant concern.

 

[connboy77]

The recruits that really want to come to UCONN will regardless of where they live. These are the type of recruits that Geno and UCONN want.

 

[easttexastrash]

UConn is an incredible program. I would never be surprised to see any player choose to go there, no matter where they are from. You know there is almost a guarantee of getting to the Final Four and a good chance of winning a national championship.