This is the first in a three-part roundtable series collecting women's college basketball coaches' advice for high school recruits. Read Part 2 about how coaches view highlight tapes, and Part 3 on how to reach out to coaches via email.
Club basketball showcases can often feel like make-or-break moments in the recruiting process.
They're the most intense spotlight for high school prospects. Most weekend tournaments are accompanied by a traveling host of college coaches at Division 2 and 3 levels. But the "live period" turns up the stakes even higher; these specific dates on the recruiting calendar are for Division 1 colleges to scout players in person. The swarms of coaches along the baselines of these massive regional showcases can be overwhelming.
With thousands of players competing in a day, how can someone make the right impression?
We talked with five women's college basketball coaches about their advice for high school recruits: a Division 1 head coach, a Division 3 head coach and three Division 1 assistants in different programs. These coaches were granted anonymity so they could speak more honestly about the recruiting process.
Here is Part 1 of our roundtable series discussing how coaches approach live AAU showcases.
How do college coaches decide who to watch?
Coaches do not walk into gyms and convention centers with an open mind and blank canvas. They've typically written down names of players they already know about and intend to see in person. Within that list are higher-priority targets — players coaches are far along with in the recruiting process from whom they're hoping to seal a commitment soon.
"When I'm making my schedule, I'm going to start there," one Div. 1 assistant said. "We start with, OK, this is a kid that we've offered. She's visited, or she's coming for a visit soon or we're trying to get her for a visit. We talked with her on the phone, she's interested and we want to be able to really speak intelligently about her game and stuff like that. We also want her, her family (and) her coaches, to know that she's a priority for us when we're here."
The challenge: colleges don't have control over the weekend AAU schedule.
Our Div. 1 head coach leads a program she believes can afford to be more selective with its prospect pool, and that allows her to watch more full games. But all five coaches interviewed acknowledged that they often cannot watch a full game of a player even if they wanted to. They all plan out their schedules, but when target recruits overlap, they have to make concessions.
"You might have four games going on at once that you've got to show face on," the Div. 3 head coach said. "I like to stay for at least a half, and sometimes you can get a full (game) if it's the only one you really have to see, but then you feel like, maybe I should be seeing somebody else right now? It's crazy and it's always moving, but you just want to make sure you're at least showing face and they see you, and that parents see you."
The coaches have their lists — but that doesn't mean they're rigid. These AAU games are a chance for less-heralded talents to get the initial ball rolling on college interests. Another Div. 1 assistant said her program just hosted a recruit on an official visit who impressed her by chance at a showcase in Kentucky.
"We definitely go in with set lists, but then we also pick up players while watching one of those kids on our list that just also stand out," the Div. 1 head coach said. "That's how we build our lists, and sometimes when it comes to younger players, like eighth-graders and freshmen, we will go and watch when we know it's a good AAU program or a program that we have connection to. We'll go and watch some of those younger teams where we don't have necessarily a list, just to see if we can build our younger classes' list of recruiting."
What are college coaches watching for?
If a college coach has their eye on a player, they obviously want to see production, physical tools and a skill set that could fill a role in their team's system. One Div. 1 assistant mentioned that on loaded AAU rosters where talented players might not receive much playing time, she likes to watch her target recruits go through warmups to get a snapshot of their shot mechanics. Generally, the consensus was that other intangibles like effort level and physical toughness also really matter in a college projection.
"Body language is crucial — that screams louder than anything that any athlete can say," one Div. 1 assistant said.
What if a potential recruit goes cold scoring in front of a college coach who's there watching? That doesn't mean your chances are over.
"Don't press about making every shot. There's so many ways to impact a basketball game, so make sure you do all the things that you can really control, and do those things well," the Division 1 head coach said. "Make sure you're rebounding, you're hustling, you're playing hard on the defensive end, talking to your teammates, you're being a great teammate, you're seeing the open player, you're being unselfish. And then if you're scoring on top of doing all those things, that's a bonus."
How about if you're not on the target list? The same traits can help you make an impression, according to our college coaches, especially amidst the freewheeling that often defines AAU hoops.
"Those things kind of jump off the page because the AAU scene is so full of kids that are just — they're too cool for school," another Div. 1 assistant said. "They're out there just wandering around until they get the ball and then taking 15 dribbles and jacking up a tough shot in traffic, or whatever. So when you see a kid that's playing the game the right way — that is hustling, talking, sprinting, defending, really working off the ball and things like that — those things stand out."
The same assistant added that he often sees players try to do too much themselves in the limited minutes of an AAU game and let frustration take over. He applauded a recent recruit who landed on his radar at a South Carolina showcase, not for her standout talent, but for the way she sprinted and communicated. Footwork and skill can be constantly taught and refined; the assistant said it's much harder to teach I.Q. and effort, especially when it's a college prerequisite.
"I say it all the time when I speak to players at camps and everything: Most low-level players stand around on defense when they're not guarding the ball, and they stand around on offense when they don't have the ball," he said. "Someone who actually sprints and cuts and moves, even if it's just spacing out and having your hands up in the corner and whatever, and then making an appropriate cut, you know, sprinting back on defense — we notice that stuff."
College coaches aren't just watching players
Recruiting a prospect also means recruiting their family — and how a family acts at a showcase can be a window into the potential dynamic down the road.
"I've seen people (cross recruits) off for behavior in stands," the Div. 3 head coach said. "It's a lot. Some of it's harder at some events because the parents are further away, so you really can't tell, but it's some little things sometimes. When players are looking in the stands after every play, I'll watch out for that a little bit and follow up on that to see, is the coach the coach, or is the parent the coach?"
That doesn't mean every college coach is eyeing parents with the same microscope as scouting players. But families can be outliers on positive and negative extremes.
"Coaches talk," one Div. 1 assistant said. "If a kid comes on a visit, I've had a lot of coaches be like, 'Oh, this parent's crazy.' So I think that matters. Is it everything? No, because at the end of the day, it's the kid that's coming to our school. But are these parents going to cause issues?"
