The Impossible Job of Recruiting for Tar Heel Basketball
By Matt Hamm
Recruiting for the North Carolina Tar Heels is much like being the general manager for the New York Yankees. Unlike most teams who have limitations, Roy Williams can get pretty much anyone he wants to Chapel Hill. Sure, sometimes a player chooses Kentucky or some other big time school, just like baseball players choose the Red Sox or another big market team over the Yanks. For the most part, more players end up never receiving that offer from UNC that they covet.
Roy definitely has a problem on his hands most coaches not named Cal, K or Roy only dream of. The pick of the litter sounds nice, but brings with it another level of expectations. Not only do these coaches need to win consistently, they need to pick the perfect batch of new comers each and every year. The masses will have no less. As Jay Z so eloquently put it, it’s the gift and the curse.
Batting .300 is considered an All-Star in baseball, shoot 45% from down town, your a sharp shooter. Hit on anything but 100% of the recruits you bring in, unacceptable. Bring in anything less than five star recruits and critics wonder why you didn’t push harder for Nerlens Noel.
I’ve talked about the recruiting strategy employed by Carolina several times. Roy is not going to put together a class of four or five, five star recruits. One or two with the rest filled out with four star guys and maybe a three star or preferred walk on to top it off is the more likely. This is not Kentucky.
Beyond that, recruiting is an inexact science. A lot of times, fans pay attention to the scouting services ranking systems. They want the top ten recruit each and every time. When in reality, a lot of times, the guy ranked #10 and the guy ranked #20 aren’t that much different. And sometimes you make the “wrong” move.
These “wrong” moves get beat to death each and every recruiting season. I’ll give Roy credit, it seems to bother me more than him. In fact, he offers up some of the stories on himself. Was it the wrong move to give Brandon Wright his last scholarship instead of Kevin Durant? The answer that comes to mind is yes, of course it was. But why is that? Is it because Durant blew it up at Texas? Or is it because Wright left after his freshman year of not doing much in Chapel Hill? In reality, Wright was a five star, superstar in waiting big man that UNC needed. Roy had no way of knowing he would leave after his freshman year. He was stacked on the perimeter and didn’t need Durant as much. If Wright stays, he becomes a star in college, Roy’s wrong because a 19 year old made a mistake leaving school early?
This was Matt Dougherty but the same principle applies. In the case of not offering Chris Paul? Paul grew up a Tar Heel fan, wanted to go to Carolina, but ultimately didn’t get the offer when he wanted it. Dougherty told him he didn’t have a scholarship available but may at the end of his junior year. Then when he offered him, Paul committed to Wake Forest who had been recruiting him hard the longest. But Dougherty was supposed to know that Paul was going to explode into the type of PG that warranted a UNC offer. He was also supposed to deliver the offer in a timely manner so Paul would accept? Not in my book.
Plenty more stories like this have circulated throughout the years. It’s not just Carolina, I don’t frequent the Kentucky boards but fans crush coach Cal who gets it done when it comes to recruiting. The point here is not to lash out at fans. I want the most exciting basketball with the best possible team also. What we all need to understand is recruiting is extremely unpredictable. It involves extremely hard work by dedicated professionals in what boils down to a guessing game. Think about the number of first round busts in professional sports year in and year out. Recruiting is no different.