AAU vs. Highschool recruiting

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4four4

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Do college coaches recruit more during the AAU season vs the high school season? I understand relationships are important but if one group of coaches wield more power is it best to spend more time with the AAU coaches or the high school coaches?
 


Summer. That's when they see kids against other top players. I saw Vince Carter, Amare Stoudemire, Austin Rivers, and several other McD's kids in HS. You knew they were by far the best on the floor but weren't always sure how they'll handle college situations until you see them in big summer events.
 

I’m not part of the system but I thought it was common knowledge or perception that the club people wield the influence. The only high school coach I know who had a D1 player had zero influence on the players decision and they had a respectful relationship.
 



I saw Tyus Jones sleep walk to 35ish against Rosemount. Tyus could have scored 50ppg in high school. He chose not to. EYBL he was great but had to try to be great. Couldn’t just walk into the gym knowing the other team had no one who could possibly defend him.
 

So on a similar but somewhat different note...are others extremely anxious to see what happens to these high school AAU coaches when the high profile players continue to not come to the U?

They got the guy they wanted as head coach here. Can the blame for that trend finally be placed somewhere else besides the U basketball coach?

Edit: Can they please be under fire from the local media?
 

Club/AAU is where you stand out. Dominating in High School isn't that hard honestly, it's on an AAU level where you show your chops.
 

tmvander said:
So on a similar but somewhat different note...are others extremely anxious to see what happens to these high school AAU coaches when the high profile players continue to not come to the U?

They got the guy they wanted as head coach here. Can the blame for that trend finally be placed somewhere else besides the U basketball coach?

Edit: Can they please be under fire from the local media?
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Will not happen. If the blame isn’t on Ben it will be placed on the U in some way. The club basketball Ben connection doesn’t completely compute with me. Ben is a straight arrow good guy and these clubs are influence peddlers who want coaches to bow down to them. Doesn’t make complete sense.
 



Holy Man said:
Will not happen. If the blame isn’t on Ben it will be placed on the U in some way. The club basketball Ben connection doesn’t completely compute with me. Ben is a straight arrow good guy and these clubs are influence peddlers who want coaches to bow down to them. Doesn’t make complete sense.
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It's time that the media shift focus to those coaches as the reasoning. If Ben is their guy but their players won't play for him that's not a U problem or a Johnson problem.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
I saw Tyus Jones sleep walk to 35ish against Rosemount. Tyus could have scored 50ppg in high school. He chose not to. EYBL he was great but had to try to be great. Couldn’t just walk into the gym knowing the other team had no one who could possibly defend him.
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Yet Tyus Jones could only win one state title in his career? And that’s while playing with a great supporting cast.
You underrate high school basketball.
 

tmvander said:
So on a similar but somewhat different note...are others extremely anxious to see what happens to these high school AAU coaches when the high profile players continue to not come to the U?

They got the guy they wanted as head coach here. Can the blame for that trend finally be placed somewhere else besides the U basketball coach?

Edit: Can they please be under fire from the local media?
Click to expand...
You know AAU coaches don’t pick schools right? The kids do?
 

tmvander said:
It's time that the media shift focus to those coaches as the reasoning. If Ben is their guy but their players won't play for him that's not a U problem or a Johnson problem.
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Actually it still is. Some universities/coaches will play the game and some won’t.

We all want the U and Johnson to take the high road, and they will. But that’s not the path of least resistance.
 



Some guy said:
You know AAU coaches don’t pick schools right? The kids do?
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I am sure he does. I think he just means that, wether correct or not, they are perceived to have a decent amount of influence on the player’s decision of where the play at the next level.
 


Some guy said:
Yet Tyus Jones could only win one state title in his career? And that’s while playing with a great supporting cast.
You underrate high school basketball.
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Not at all. There are other great players. But some teams are very bad. On the Nike Aau circuit there aren’t bad teams. If a coach is going to evaluate a guy he is guaranteed to see him against good players in AAU instead of like a 25% chance in high school. Imagine flying from Texas to MN on a Tuesday, driving to Burnsville and seeing the kid you want to watch play 12 minutes?
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Not at all. There are other great players. But some teams are very bad. On the Nike Aau circuit there aren’t bad teams. If a coach is going to evaluate a guy he is guaranteed to see him against good players in AAU instead of like a 25% chance in high school. Imagine flying from Texas to MN on a Tuesday, driving to Burnsville and seeing the kid you want to watch play 12 minutes?
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None of what you just said disagrees with anything I said
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Not at all. There are other great players. But some teams are very bad. On the Nike Aau circuit there aren’t bad teams. If a coach is going to evaluate a guy he is guaranteed to see him against good players in AAU instead of like a 25% chance in high school. Imagine flying from Texas to MN on a Tuesday, driving to Burnsville and seeing the kid you want to watch play 12 minutes?
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If you're flying from TX to MN on a Tuesday night to see a kid play, I'm sure you've seen plenty of film on him. How much are you going to rely on that one event's performance? I'd think that sort of trip is so the TX coach can be seen as putting forth the time and effort needed to land the kid.
 

Some guy said:
None of what you just said disagrees with anything I said
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I wasn’t disagreeing? Sometimes you can have conversations while agreeing. I was pointing out that I wasn’t undervaluing high school basketball but it can make for tough recruiting because competition isn’t consistent. Is that ok if w3 agree?
 

bfriedrichs10 said:
If you're flying from TX to MN on a Tuesday night to see a kid play, I'm sure you've seen plenty of film on him. How much are you going to rely on that one event's performance? I'd think that sort of trip is so the TX coach can be seen as putting forth the time and effort needed to land the kid.
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It may not be for evaluation but seems wasteful to watch him play 1/4 of the game.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
I wasn’t disagreeing? Sometimes you can have conversations while agreeing. I was pointing out that I wasn’t undervaluing high school basketball but it can make for tough recruiting because competition isn’t consistent. Is that ok if w3 agree?
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You are undervaluing high school basketball when you said he could score 50 points per game in high school “if he wanted to”

that’s just flat out not true.
 

Some guy said:
You are undervaluing high school basketball when you said he could score 50 points per game in high school “if he wanted to”

that’s just flat out not true.
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50 was a stretch, my sincerest apologies. 30-35 in reasonable. Could have made hay against some really bad teams but didn’t. I’m sorry you’re so offended. I’m sure Johnson will hit the high school games hard and evaluate plenty of kids this spring at AAU games if allowed
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
It may not be for evaluation but seems wasteful to watch him play 1/4 of the game.
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I guess it depends on what the intended outcome of the trip is in the first place. I wouldn't say it's wasteful if the coach still gets to interact with the player, and maybe even more importantly, the community and media get to see it so they can all say, "Wow, this coach must be all in on me/ ______ to make that kind of trip on a Tuesday!"
 

The AAU circuit made Minnesota a hot bed for basketball recruiting. How often do you have a womens' and men's top HS basketball players come from the same state in the same year (Paige Bueckers #1, and Jalen Suggs #2)?
 

bfriedrichs10 said:
I guess it depends on what the intended outcome of the trip is in the first place. I wouldn't say it's wasteful if the coach still gets to interact with the player, and maybe even more importantly, the community and media get to see it so they can all say, "Wow, this coach must be all in on me/ ______ to make that kind of trip on a Tuesday!"
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A lot of the time they can’t even talk to the player. Which is silly.
 

boofbonser said:
I am sure he does. I think he just means that, wether correct or not, they are perceived to have a decent amount of influence on the player’s decision of where the play at the next level.
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Blaming aau/club is akin to blaming the barn for the poor performance. It’s the losing. End of story
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
50 was a stretch, my sincerest apologies. 30-35 in reasonable. Could have made hay against some really bad teams but didn’t. I’m sorry you’re so offended. I’m sure Johnson will hit the high school games hard and evaluate plenty of kids this spring at AAU games if allowed
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I’m just saying there is a lot of people speculating in here what is more important between AAU and high school basketball. And when people throw out that a guy could average 50 points per game if they wanted to in high school so that’s why coaches go to AAU games instead...it’s important for other people to know that’s not really true. And it’s why coach K (and dozens of other college coaches) went to multiple Apple Valley High School games.
 

Some guy said:
You know AAU coaches don’t pick schools right? The kids do?
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Of course I do, but why are the local coaches involved in this process? Coyle said in the presser that they consulted many of them.

If kids continue to go to other schools than the problem is one of two things...

1. The coaches don't care at all about the U or who the coach is and are advising their players to play college elsewhere.

2. The coaches have no control over where the kids go (more obvious).

In either case we know where we stand having brought in a guy mainly to better recruit MN (Coyle's words). Moving forward we can look at hiring coaches who are winners and can close the book on putting all our chips in on MN kids.
 

tmvander said:
Of course I do, but why are the local coaches involved in this process? Coyle said in the presser that they consulted many of them.

If kids continue to go to other schools than the problem is one of two things...

1. The coaches don't care at all about the U or who the coach is and are advising their players to play college elsewhere.

2. The coaches have no control over where the kids go (more obvious).

In either case we know where we stand having brought in a guy mainly to better recruit MN (Coyle's words). Moving forward we can look at hiring coaches who are winners and can close the book on putting all our chips in on MN kids.
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I don’t have a lot of HS and AAU basketball contacts but the guys who do tell me Johnson is a real dude who has open and honest conversations of where they are at and kids take well to talking to him.

I am guess why they are consulted is to confirm that kids listen when Ben Johnson talks.

No good coach would say “I am sending player X to Minnesota because they did or didn’t hire coach Y at school Z”

AAU programs are in a business. They want their kids to be successful at the next level to drum up new business. So they want to land kids at spots that are good fits for the individual kids to be successful. And that is a different answer for every kid potentially.
PLUS they can give their recommendations and then 80% of the time the kid goes somewhere else anyways....at least in my football experience.
 

Call me a cynic (Hey, you're a cynic!), but I think a lot of the high school courtship is as much for the parents as it is for the kids. Duke had built up a relationship with Tyus from the AAU circuit, but they followed through by going to the high school games to make his family witness their interest.

I think AAU/Club is where the perception about "Minnesota kid" becomes blurred. The top tier of players in the state are known to every program in the country and geography has become less important.

I am a in my late-60s and when I was growing up, the recruiting game was a lot different. I remember my high school coach showing me a letter he had received from the then-U of MN coach (can't remember if it was Fitch, Hanson, or Musselman) asking him to submit who he thought were the best 5-10 players in the conference/district and whether they could play at the D1 level (bench warmer that I was, I was not mentioned). Our area (SE MN) produced a lot of very good MIAC-level players, but every now and then some kid who had a chance would really stand out. I imagine every coach in the state got the same letter. Minnesota players stayed home for the most part because no one else knew about them.

So, in brief, that was the cave painting era of basketball recruiting. No showcases. No summer ball. You basically had to see kids in person and the connections were pretty much all through the high school coaching network. Nowadays, coaches throughout the country know about all the potential D1 players. Some kids slip under the radar, but if you put someone like Eli King in the wayback machine, probably the only programs that would have known about him would have been Minnesota, Iowa, and Iowa State.
 

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