Recruiting Kids For College Basketball

28May08

Here’s a post by Lee Sigelman @ The Monkey Cage

That’s Michael Avery, an eighth-grader from Lake Sherwood, California. Like many kids his age, Michael likes to play basketball.

After high school, Michael is going to play basketball in college. Not only that: He’s going to play at a perennial basketball powerhouse, the University of Kentucky.

Note that I didn’t just say that young Michael wants to play basketball in college, let alone at the University of Kentucky. I said he’s going to. In fact, he’s already accepted the scholarship offer that Kentucky coach Billy Gillespie extended to him earlier this month.

Now, I’m a close follower of college basketball. But this development — recruiting kids who are still in junior high — takes me completely off guard. I guess I just haven’t been paying attention, but I had no idea that it had come to this.

It’s surprises me too, but not because it’s sketchy, and it’s really sketchy, but because it seems risky. How do you really know these kids are going to be the best you can get 3 years later. The school can probably retract the scholarship offers to these kids, but you’d think that would endanger their reputation with future prospects if they did too much.

Anyway I could be wrong and it might be possible to reliably tell if a 13 year old kid will be stud college basketball prospect 5 years later. Regardless is there really in downside for the NCAA if they banned talking to a prospect before they were 16?

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Tags: Billy Gillespie, College Basketball Recruiting, Lee Sigelman, NCAA Basketball, The Monkey Cage