By Nate West
News Assignment Editor
The loss of Andrew Nicholson to the NBA, along with the graduation of Jake Houseknecht and Da’Quan Cook, left some positions that needed filling on the men’s basketball roster.
After a successful season last year, an Atlantic 10 Championship victory and an NCAA Tournament birth, most people would expect men’s basketball recruitment to go up. Surprisingly, that wasn’t the case.
“When you talk to kids, they recognize more the name and they’ve seen us play,” head coach Mark Schmidt said. “It’s too early to tell whether or not it’s going to have any impact. It can’t hurt, it can only help.”
The team welcomed three new players this year: Dion Wright, a guard/forward from Lakewood Calif., Jean Yves Toupane, a guard/forward from Senegal, and Matthias Runs, a forward from The Netherlands.
Two of this year’s recruits were first spotted by scouts while looking at prospects in past years. Toupane played in Senegal with sophomore center Youssou Ndoye, and Runs played in the Canarias Basketball Academy with junior guard Charlon Kloof.
The recruitment process is a several-year process. Recruitment can start as early as seventh grade, but Schmidt says, on average, kids begin receiving letters from potential schools around their sophomore year.
Coaches and scouts are also allowed to call and text players as frequently as they want, as a result of a rule change that began on June 15, according to NCAA.com. Before that, coaches weren’t allowed to text and could only make one call per week to a prospect. He also said that it is common for schools to use a second phone, one that the NCAA didn’t monitor, to call prospects more than legally allowed.
St. Bonaventure recruits by designating one assistant to focus on sophomores and juniors. The remaining few assistants focus on seniors and rising seniors; students who have completed their junior year, but not yet begun senior year.
“Recruiting is the life-blood of the program,” Schmidt said. “You call them, you send mail to them, and you do your homework on what type of kids they are. It’s the most important part, but it’s also the most frustrating.”
One problem facing coaches are players who back out of commitments. Two seasons ago, a player signed the National Letter of Intent for St. Bonaventure, but backed out to play somewhere else, Schmidt said.
“If you sign, and say you want to come and then ultimately don’t come, well then I don’t want you,” Schmidt said. “We look to get guys who love to play. Our evaluation has to be, ‘What is their potential and where are they going to be a year or two from now?’”
Players who want to play for a more recognizable school also pose a problem to recruiters. Players are concerned about what level they’ll be playing at, so when a more recognizable school shows interest in a prospect, smaller schools, like St. Bonaventure, tend to fall by the wayside, Schmidt said.
Something that will be a significant factor over the next few years is Andrew Nicholson being selected at number 19 overall in the NBA Draft, Schmidt said.
“Bob Lanier is a big name, but kids now a days don’t know who he is,” Schmidt said. “So Andrew is a huge part (of new recruiting methods), and for him to have the success that he had … every 16 or 17-year-old kid knows who Andrew is.”
Schmidt has high hopes for this year’s recruits.
“You need to have freshmen play their roles, whatever their role is,” Schmidt said. “We’re going to need them to come in and play their role and do the best job they can.”
westnl11@bonaventure.edu
