Recruiters Face a New Reality

Two sophomores, two juniors and a senior started for Arizona in the NCAA men’s basketball championship game against Duke in April.

When Jason Gardner jogs onto the court to play Maryland today in the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic in New York, he’ll be the only one left.

“It’s shocking, but it’s reality,” said Salim Stoudamire, a freshman guard for Arizona and a cousin of former Wildcat Damon Stoudamire.

Loren Woods was a senior.

Richard Jefferson, a junior, turned pro and plays for the New Jersey Nets.

Gilbert Arenas, a sophomore, became a Golden State Warrior.

Michael Wright, another junior, turned pro--and was cut by the New York Knicks last month.

Even Gardner declared for the NBA draft, but didn’t sign with an agent and withdrew, becoming an anomaly by returning for his junior year.

Here’s more reality.

Arizona, the runner-up in theNCAA tournament, isn’t ranked in the Associated Press preseason poll for the first time since 1995--and if the Wildcats aren’t ranked next week, it will end a regular-season streak that dates to 1987.

“If they all stayed, we’d be top two in the country again,” forward Luke Walton said.

“It’s their decision. You just have to make the best of who stays and who goes.”

That is what college basketball coaches are grappling with in a game where senior standouts seem as rare as 7-footers who can shoot the three.

“It’s almost to the point now where you look at someone and if he’s a really good player, you think, well, it’s probably going to be two years,” Arizona Coach Lute Olson said.

The challenge is managing continuity when designations such as freshman, sophomore and junior no longer have much meaning.

How do you recruit when you don’t know how many players you will have to replace?

Is a great player who might stay two years better than a very good one who will play four?

And what about scheduling? Olson loaded up with Maryland, Kansas, Illinois and Michigan State in a season when he thought he’d have Jefferson and Wright up front and Gardner and Arenas in the backcourt.

Instead--partly because of a controversial new NCAA rule that allowed only five new scholarships a year and no more than eight over two years--he has nine scholarship players, and five freshmen.

The answers and strategies are only now emerging.

Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, whose Blue Devils won the NCAA title last season only two years after losing sophomores Elton Brand and William Avery and freshman Corey Maggette to the NBA draft, is asking his players to openly plan their departures.

Jason Williams and Carlos Boozer already have said this will be their final season, as has Frank Williams of Illinois, another of the nation’s top players.

“We’re trying to get to where at the end of the year, you don’t hold a press conference and get surprised somebody’s going,” said Krzyzewski, admittedly caught off guard when Avery and Maggette left early.

That’s not only so Duke can plan to replace players--and so recruits know there’s playing time to be had--but so the players can plan their academic schedules.

Williams went to both sessions of summer school and has a chance to graduate after three years.

“The two things my guys want is a Duke degree and being a pro, and we should work with them from Day One--even when we’re recruiting them--to talk to them about both of those,” Krzyzewski said. “Because they’re both worthwhile goals, and they can be done together.”

Knowing a player’s plans in advance is a tremendous advantage.

Consider Stanford. Jason Collins didn’t decide until May he would leave school with two years of eligibility remaining. (Collins graduated after four years, but injuries left him officially a sophomore.)

“The only awkward spot for us was we couldn’t replace his scholarship,” Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery said. “You’re hoping he’s going to stay.

“We actually had two real good players, ready to go. They’d been admitted and the whole deal. We kept saying, ‘We can’t give you a scholarship because Jason might come back.’ Then by the time he decided to go, it was too late. We’d have had a player.”

The Krzyzewski strategy, Montgomery points out, won’t work for everyone.

“I think he can do that, because the guys he’s got are pretty much sure-fire pros. So it doesn’t matter whether you’re out in two or go out in three, it’s more the draft position than it is whether you’re a pro or not.

“Then he just goes out and gets the very best players again.”

Beyond numbers, the early departures raise a whole new issue in evaluating recruits: What are their intentions?

“We’ve stopped recruiting kids if we feel there’s a chance they’re going to go right from high school or if they’ll clearly be a one-year and on to the NBA,” UCLA Coach Steve Lavin said.

Tyson Chandler from Compton Dominguez High, the No. 2 pick in the NBA draft, seemed so unlikely to play in college that UCLA courted him only cursorily after his junior year.

“We just don’t expend too much time or energy if we feel they’re going to be kids that go straight to the NBA or plan on playing one or two years and moving on,” Lavin said.

Of course, any coach at a traditional power who ignores the best players does so at his peril.

“Obviously, at Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, North Carolina, UCLA, one losing season or one NIT and there’s a chance the coaching staff is not going to be there,” Lavin said.

“That’s the kind of dilemma major college programs struggle with: You have to have a team year to year that will be able to compete nationally, and as a result you have to go after impact players who can come as freshmen and keep you at that level. If you lost players to the NBA, you have to do it again.”

The strategy Lavin has developed is to try to gauge not only players’ intentions but their legitimate prospects of jumping to the NBA early, then try to come up with a mix of four-year players and visiting stars--what he calls tortoises and hares.

“You want enough tortoises that are going to be in school four or five years that are going to provide stability, continuity and leadership to allow you to have long-term success at a competitive level,” he said.

“But you also need enough hares who have the ability to impact your program at a high level and keep you competitive nationally.”

The difficulty is telling which players are which when they’re 17. Some think it’s useless to guess, and say the days of strategies like recruiting an apprentice point guard or a big man in training every two years are over.

“Anymore, you have to try to recruit the best players you can recruit and hopefully be ready for whatever happens,” Olson said.

It’s a new world, one where the nation’s top-ranked team, Duke, has one senior and not only the best point guard in the country in Jason Williams but also the second best.

Chris Duhon, who was poised to take over if Williams left after two years, instead plays alongside him.

It’s a world where Arizona freshman Dennis Latimore says most top players talk openly about playing only two years in college before turning pro.

“But I could say I want to stay one, two, three, four, whatever. It really doesn’t mean anything,” Latimore said.”People talk a lot, but talk’s cheap.”