So I try my best to keep up with recruiting, however it's a lot to keep up with.
I have observed a few things and wanted to see what everyone's opinion was.
I see some schools on every top prospects top 12 or less. Others I see scattered amongst the group. So my question is do some school try to throw their an offer at all the top prospects and look at it as a numbers game? Or do most of the Top schools go for what they need?
One school has 11 offers out to top prospects in the 19 class.
Another I noticed had 9.
I know some go for what they need and I'm assuming some have to think I won't win even half so I need to double what I need. Is this what you do until your name or coach mean more?
I did not count recruits that have already committed, these are just current offers. So the numbers from the two examples above could grow more.
Thoughts?
From an outside perspective, every coach is different in his or her approach. When looking at the top programs...I think there are a few distinct approaches.
You look at a coach like Walz, and it almost appears that he throws offers all over the place and sees who he can land, regardless if he has the scholarships to do so. Players transfer out almost every year and Louisville always has an extremely deep roster.
Texas and Baylor seem to have similar approaches, but they usually target just the top players and try to haul in as many top kids as they can and structure their roster from there. Both Aston and Mulkey have no problem overflooding their roster with talented players to the point that some really talented kids will see little playing time (ex. Texas this year with Patterson and Boothe both getting little PT). Regularly we see talented kids transfer out due to lack of playing time, and it definitely has a "survival of the fittest" type of feel. It can be helpful for when injuries happen, but it can create chemistry issues too. This upcoming year for Texas, they were going to have Boothe, Holmes, White, Collier and Prince all playing for likely 3 rotation spots. All of those players were top recruits too. Boothe ended up transferring, and Prince broke her leg so depth worked out for Texas in this case, but it appears last year had some chemistry issues. Curious to see how it works out for Baylor's star studded class. I think several of these schools use conditional offers, where they let players know they are offering multiple players the same scholarship and whoever declares first gets it. Or that the player is their 2nd choice and they need to wait and see if the top choice comes first before they can offer a scholarship.
Other programs like Stanford and Notre Dame have a more limited pool of players they can go after due to academic rigor, but they seem more 'thoughtful' in their approach, in that they rarely carry large rosters and never seem to be overloaded with talented players. They usually have a couple of standouts who they build the team around, and then everyone else on their roster knows their role and plays within their abilities. This approach has worked quite well for both programs, the only downfall is that the teams can struggle if they don't have a major standout, or if they have injuries. Stanford hasn't been able to land a true standout since Ogwumike, and Notre Dame has had some bad injury issues the last 2 years. I think these schools generally get the most development out of their players since it appears the players know their roles quite well and improve within the system's framework. Not necessarily related, but these schools also tend to have better coaches IMO. Tara/Muffet/Rueck/Vic/Geno all share similarities in that players on their team know their role and play good team basketball. I'm guessing these coaches usually put more eggs in 1 basket than Baylor/Texas/Louisville do.
UCONN is its own animal when it comes to recruitment style. They are the behemoth in the sport, so Geno pretty much has the luxury to handpick who he wants on his roster. I know there are plenty of examples where he hasn't landed players he's wanted, but I would venture a guess that the scholarship offer to acceptance rate is higher at UCONN than any other program school. Looking at the 2018-19 roster, UCONN has 3 different #1 recruits on the roster, two other players who were top 5 recruits, and Collier who was the #6 recruit. No one else comes close to matching that type of top heavy talent Geno has assembled. Geno does a great job of selecting players who will have the personality or work ethic that fit his style, and he also does a good job of building teams that are extremely top heavy without overloading them. You never see UCONN go more than about 7 deep, and players on the roster know their role and those who get PT know the system inside and out. Players who doesn't like his style or don't like their role on the team usually know very quickly and leave early on. I think his recruitment style is unique to anyone else's, but has similarities to Notre Dame/Stanford. The main difference is that he always has more talented rosters than those programs with 2-3 All-Americans playing at a time, and usually 2-3 future All-Americans waiting in the wings for the current ones to move on.
Tennessee under Pat was kind of a mix between Geno's approach and the Mulkey/Aston one. Pat always had a loaded roster, sometimes to the point of being overloaded, but she always had top kids on her roster and did a great job of getting players to buy into her system while keeping egos in check. Tennessee also suffered some really brutal seasons in regards to key injuries (2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, and 2009) so Pat understandably opted for deeper rosters. It is worth noting that her title teams rarely went more than 7-8 deep in big games, and those teams never had top recruits riding the pine.
Then you have other coaches like Dawn and McGuff who really utilize the transfer and grad transfer markets. Transfers have been hugely important to SC the last couple of years and should continue to be this upcoming season. Same with Ohio State. Mississippi State might be trending into this category too. The pros of this approach is that you are getting more of a known commodity and a proven player if you can land a proven player. The negatives are that you're more likely to have players transfer out or disgruntled players who lose minutes to a 1 year grad transfer. It definitely goes both ways...but I think this will continue to be more and more common as time goes on.
I don't think there is any one style or system that's necessarily the best, although I think programs that build rosters around 1-2 stars typically have the best on court chemistry. Each approach has its own pros and cons, but overall team success depends more on quality coaching IMO. You look at a program like Ohio State this past year that had a slew of top recruits and HS All-Americans and they were blown out at home in the 2nd round. Compare that to Mississippi State with 0 HS All-Americans and they went 37-2 and almost won the championship. What's the difference? Coaching.
