By: Austin Siegel
Bruce Weber knows his way around BallerTV.
It's a streaming app for some of the best youth basketball leagues in the country, with a name that sounds like it was designed to frustrate a coach like Weber, who's been doing this since 1979.
And yet during an offseason like this one, you need a coach who can watch a fifth-grade basketball player or a junior college prospect and see the D1 potential in both.
As K-State men's basketball has learned to navigate the strange world of virtual recruiting, it helps to talk to a guy who's been doing this long enough to know that college basketball recruiting has never been normal to begin with.
"Before AAU even started, and sometimes it's hard for the young guys to even fathom that, you were going to summer leagues and going to watch them on the playground," Weber said. "You were calling them up and there weren't even cell phones."
Ahead of his ninth season at K-State, Weber and his staff put the finishing touches on a seven-man recruiting class this summer, one that he believes is the best group of freshmen to arrive on campus during his time in Manhattan.
Throw in UTEP transfer Kaosi Ezeagu and Weber has nearly enough new faces to scrimmage the baseball team. While recruiting the class of 2020 might have begun as a normal process, the home stretch came against the backdrop of COVID-19 and an increasingly strange offseason.
"We had to sign some players and you had to do it virtually. It's one thing to recruit a young player for 2021 and 2022 virtually, because you hope that someday they get to visit," Weber said. "But that first group from Rudi Williams to Seryee Lewis to Carlton Linguard, those guys had never even been to campus."
Without the ability to host recruits on campus visits, the centerpiece of the experience for most student-athletes, Weber and his staff have had to blend the old school and the new school.
Weber said he is hosting about four to five virtual visits every week, with members of the class of 2021 and some high-profile members from the class of 2022. He's also relying on streaming services like BallerTV and Hudl to watch tape on high school and JUCO prospects.
"With Rudi Williams, we really used video as our big tool to watch him," Weber said. "We had seen Carlton quite a bit during the year, we had a chance to see Seryee some, though we continued to watch tape on him and evaluate as we got deeper into the recruiting process."
Virtual tours and videos have been part of K-State's recruiting pitch, but there's more of an emphasis than ever on the connection between student-athletes and the whole coaching staff.
That's where having someone like Shane Southwell in the fold can be so valuable.
Returning to Manhattan after a historic career at K-State and a coaching stint at Robert Morris, Southwell can provide recruits with the perspective of someone who went from the Big Apple to the Little Apple when he signed with K-State out of Rice High School in New York City.
"A school like Kansas State has great facilities, great people, great staff and it's a great town. That's something we would use as an advantage in a normal year," he said. "But right now, it's all virtual visits."
As a young assistant coach, Southwell said he is still learning the recruiting process from the coaching side. During an offseason where every member of the staff is, to some degree, navigating virtual recruiting for the first time, he hasn't needed to look far for guidance.
"Even for Coach Weber, this is a new year and a new precedent for him. It's different for everybody," Southwell said. "With the virtual visits, you're making even more calls because there were no workouts in the spring. You didn't have the opportunity to go evaluate guys."
The Wildcats picked up a commitment from Nijel Pack last summer and Selton Miguel, Davion Bradford and Luke Kasubke in the fall. For almost half of the 2020 class, at least part of their recruitment and K-State commitment took place virtually.
Weber said the team has put together an hour-long video presentation packed with information about the program, campus and K-State traditions. Combined with calls and texts that make up the usual recruiting process, it's a blended approach that Weber said has allowed his coaching staff to "get their faces out there" in front of the country's top recruits.
The addition of Southwell to the coaching staff in March gave K-State another recruiting weapon in a decorated former player, not far removed from his own career at K-State.
Southwell was able to assist on the recruiting trail right when COVID-19 was changing the college basketball landscape.
"We all had a hand in recruiting Rudi because there was a need for us at point guard," Southwell said. "Carlton Linguard was a guy we had been recruiting all year with Coach Korn and Coach Weber. Once Coach Korn left, I got in there and started recruiting Carlton, just trying to make him feel comfortable and understand that this is still K-State, I played for Coach Korn and worked with him, so getting a feel for Carlton and still recruiting him was great."
Williams became one of the last members of the 2020 recruiting class when he signed with the Wildcats out of Northeastern Oklahoma A&M in April. It was a quick process and an example of how different every recruiting experience can be, even for a veteran coach like Weber.
"Jabari Parker, I started recruiting him in fifth grade. He came to a camp and we got to know him," Weber said. "When we were at Illinois you had this big population base or in Indiana when I was at Purdue, you had Indianapolis, Chicago and Detroit within driving distance. You were just recruiting players at a younger age."
Williams' virtual commitment to K-State in April was unique at the time, but members of the 2021 and 2022 recruiting class have begun to make that decision the norm across college basketball.
As he begins to reach out to basketball players who won't arrive in Manhattan for almost two years, Weber is hopeful that campus visits and face-to-face meetings with players will return.
That doesn't mean he isn't prepared for whatever the future of recruiting might look like.
"You're seeing some of those guys start to commit and our coaches have brought it up," Weber said. "I don't think guys will panic yet, but if we get to September and we still can't go out to recruit or there's no classes, I'm sure a lot of kids will want to have a school."
And yet some challenges remain the same for Weber as he moves from recruiting a rising junior like Williams with D1 offers on the table to a high school player still studying for the SATs.
"We had three or four recruits last week and we were like, 'Hey, do you have any questions?' and they were like, 'Well we're not sure what we should even ask yet.' It's interesting the difference in some of the classes," Weber said. "I've learned a lot about Zoom and FaceTime because we have to figure out a way to get our faces in front of them."
"how" - Google News
July 10, 2020 at 06:03PM
https://ift.tt/2AP0Hsw
SE: How Bruce Weber, K-State Men's Hoops Signed Game-Changing Recruits in a Pandemic - K-StateSports.com
"how" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2MfXd3I
https://ift.tt/3d8uZUG
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "SE: How Bruce Weber, K-State Men's Hoops Signed Game-Changing Recruits in a Pandemic - K-StateSports.com"
Post a Comment