Anyone had success here? I am in third season with team and we have made progress but this season I have 5 open scholarships and there are no solid recruits in the state of Hawaii. We have a C- prestige.

internationals, baby.

1. I have been at hawaii and had okay success - others have done real well in some worlds

2.  expand your definition of a good recruit - you need to take anyone local with zkillz even if he is flawed - for example, a big who will never have an offensive game but who can rebound, block shots, play defense - grab him

3.  be sure to run a system that lets you be flexible - you will have to recruit some kids with weak DEF, so you dont want to run Man defense

4.  internationals

5.  look at the mainland for overlooked kids and for teams who have overreached - this will be hard until you get that prestige up

6.  schedule easy to be sure to win 20 games to help that prestige go up

we should have a permanent Hawaii thread for the community of current and former hawaii coaches

I was at BYU Hawaii in D II for while...I understand the internationals thing, since it puts you on the same playing field as everyone else, but you can't see potential. I always scouted a big state or 2, cali, tx...then went after the best players I could afford. These were pulldowns, so I figured I'd need 8, 8.5k per...a couple walkons and slowdown to make sure your starters get bulk of minutes worked ok for me...I did get sick of it and bail for Shaw in the Central though (this is Rupp D II btw...)

You think Hawaii's bad, try coaching at one of the Puerto Rico schools in DII. You can't even use FSS on players in your own neighborhood since Puerto Ricans are treated like internationals. I'm surprised I can even make the NIT.

1eyedmonster took Hawaii Pacific to the DII Final Four this week in Rupp. Prestige was B+.

He has 3 internationals on the roster. The others are from 9 different states

Have 18 seasons at Hawaii including a Final Four and a Sweet 16 among a few other NT and PIT appearances.  Make the Islands a fortress and take the best recruits from the Islands, even if you need to fend off a school like UNC or Kentucky.  Do not back away from any recruiting battle if the kid is from Hawaii.  Go after Internationals WITHOUT battling for them...there are usually several good Intl players left after the initial wave of recruiting cycles that are still undecided.  Take a player late in recruiting from the Continental US that has high potential and redshirt him.

That plan will get you a good to very good team every three to four seasons.  You will have down seasons so expect them.  You are really relying on a powerful PAC-10 from your conference mates to keep your prestige from bottoming during rebuilding years and for giving you the needed recruiting cash to go for the Intls and the like.  Your best friends are the 11 other schools in the PAC-10, so when recruiting, don't mess around with the West Coast or Arizona.  You need them a lot more than they need you.

Recruiting in DII w. a team in HI is very, very different from recruiting at HI in DI.

Posted by gomiami1972 on 9/23/2010 8:13:00 PM (view original):
Have 18 seasons at Hawaii including a Final Four and a Sweet 16 among a few other NT and PIT appearances.  Make the Islands a fortress and take the best recruits from the Islands, even if you need to fend off a school like UNC or Kentucky.  Do not back away from any recruiting battle if the kid is from Hawaii.  Go after Internationals WITHOUT battling for them...there are usually several good Intl players left after the initial wave of recruiting cycles that are still undecided.  Take a player late in recruiting from the Continental US that has high potential and redshirt him.

That plan will get you a good to very good team every three to four seasons.  You will have down seasons so expect them.  You are really relying on a powerful PAC-10 from your conference mates to keep your prestige from bottoming during rebuilding years and for giving you the needed recruiting cash to go for the Intls and the like.  Your best friends are the 11 other schools in the PAC-10, so when recruiting, don't mess around with the West Coast or Arizona.  You need them a lot more than they need you.

Listen to this guy.  He builds winning programs everywhere he goes!

       I had a few seasons at BYU Hawaii, and had good sucsess, but tourny failures... I always tried to get anyone one the Island that was even remotley talented. Those guys develop into good reserves and can start if the rest of the squad is good.

       Then I would try to grab a really talented international player or two. There is always enough international talent to get great players without much fight from other coaches.

       Last I would wait untill recruiting is winding down and try and pick off a west coast stud with a rush of recruiting cash. Usually I would target someone who had interest from a good coach, who targeted or spent cash on more players than he had room for. My last year there I managed to pick away a  point guard and center 
 from one of the D1 schools in Oregon. They both came in and started for me. I went 23-10 that season and was ranked #25, with a sweet sixteen. Then after I left to go D1 myself the next coach went 66-28 with a PI final four and 2 National Tourny apperances.

I miss recruiting from Hawaii. I agree with gomaiami that you have to fight over anybody actually on the island. In my case, I was at Hawaii Pacific (DII), and I had plenty of competition on the islands. There were good coaches at Chaminade and Hawaii at Hilo. I recruited Alaska and internationally as I felt I had the same limitations there as the mainland schools. I would budget about 20% of funds for local players and about 80% on internationals.