I quit for a few seasons, then I came back and eventually took over Texas after a season or two at a mid-major.  I had some reasonable seasons at Texas, but when I had one season of credit left in Rupp I lost half of my roster due to early entries and didn't feel like going through a total rebuild in my final season.  So I coached one more season at KC-Mizzou and then dropped out of Rupp entirely.  I only have one team now, Maryland in Smith.  And one team is enough for me, frankly.  I love the game, but real life interferes sometimes.

Recruiting at Maryland is much easier than at Arizona.  Yes, there is competition for recuits at Maryland... but at least there is always a good pool to select from.  At Arizona it was occasional boom but mostly bust.  Half of the time the best recruits within several hundred miles were in southern Cali, where UCLA would have a huge advantage over me in terms of distance.  At Maryland, I get to choose who to go after; at Arizona, the recruit generator chose for me.  Just didn't feel like battling that situation any further.

Posted by amsiegel on 1/7/2012 2:29:00 PM (view original):
I am having some success at Arizona in Phelan but the recruiting out here is weird. Basically, you scramble and tread water trying to put together consistent Sweet 16 teams to keep you prestige up so that, the one year in four or five that the Gods drop a bunch of elite recruits in the desert, you can scope them all up and make a national title run. I think every area has it's own plusses and minuses, so it is really all about what style of recruiting you find most fun.

Scrambling/treading water are exactly how I feel most seasons. Ironically, my two Elite 8 teams here at Arizona had no more than 2 starred recruits on their rosters. Those teams had 10-11 zero star recruits who were under the radar diamonds in the rough. Even had a couple of them drafted by the NBA. So I always look for guys like that, and always look hard at internationals, but you can't really rely on hitting paydirt like that every season, so it results in ups and downs in the program when there's nothing good local.

Posted by stinenavy on 1/8/2012 2:05:00 AM (view original):
If you're having issues at Arizona, imagine how tough it must be to coach at Arizona St.

Arizona St. definitely is at a disadvantage when it comes to baseline prestige, but desertdave79 has done a great job in Smith, consistently making the NT, and is currently in the Final Four there. That team further illustrates the shortage of high-end talent in the region, though, as 7 of his players are from outside his 360-mile radius.

As an aside, baseline prestige disadvantage notwithstanding, Arizona State is a bit better geographically for recruiting than Arizona, by virtue of their being farther north. I wish Arizona was in Tempe instead of Tucson!

Arizona's 360-radius covers AZ, half of NM, the extreme southeastern tip of California (not even as far west as San Diego) and tiny slivers of Utah and Nevada, but not Las Vegas, where a good chunk of the NV recruits are. That's it.

Arizona St. on the other hand gets all of AZ, half of NM, a decent piece of southern CA, almost right up to Los Angeles, Las Vegas for the NV recruits, and small pieces of Utah and Colorado.

Posted by lmschwarz on 1/8/2012 10:33:00 AM (view original):
Although I'm not an A+ program at my Colortado (Phelan), I feel the same way. If the recruit generator gives me quality recruits within 360 miles I'll have a good class, if not, I may get one very good recruit outside the area, but not the two or three needed to compete on a national level. Having Syracuse on Knight, I rarely have that problem as the northeast usually has plenty of recruits. The problem in the northeast, however, is the high number of quality programs competing for said recruits. So each area has its good points and bad points.

Whenever I first break into BCS-level schools in a world, I've always been intrigued about possibly coaching at Colorado, since I believe it is the only mainland BCS school that does not have any other BCS schools within it's 360-mile radius. I always figured that once the prestige got up, the whole state could become an impenetrable fortress, and the Buffs would be virtually assured of every good recruit that came out of there and Wyoming with (hopefully) little recruiting effort, leaving vast resources for expanding outward if needed (or so the plan went, in theory, anyway!). Of course, if no good recruits get generated in Colorado, then that changes things a bit! I applied once, but didn't get the job. Maybe someday...

Looking at the six worlds I'm in Colorado is at least an A- prestige. Wyoming is some kind of basketball hotbed for HD, and Colorado cleans up on the recruits there.

I took this into account when I went to UTEP. Part of the game and part of the challenge. On the flip side of the issue, I get very little competition for the better recruits in the neighborhood. Some day, should I move up, I'll take geography into account.

Yeah, as a A- CU coach, its for sure weird.  No local competiton of any caliber, you have to watch a little bit of long range poaching, but you can do some yourself.  Its a weird place to be.  Very isolated.  Almost like Hawaii in the middle of the country.

Posted by reinsel on 1/9/2012 10:00:00 AM (view original):
Yeah, as a A- CU coach, its for sure weird.  No local competiton of any caliber, you have to watch a little bit of long range poaching, but you can do some yourself.  Its a weird place to be.  Very isolated.  Almost like Hawaii in the middle of the country.

Except you get 10 D1 recruits in HI and no chance to compete for any decent recruit on the continental US. I think any HI coach would trade with CU in a heartbeat :)

Colorado can be tough at times too, though. When I got to Air Force in Smith the school had a higher prestige than CU. And for the first five seasons I was there there wasn't a single recruit ranked in the top 15 at his position. Not one.

Posted by uglyskunk3 on 1/7/2012 12:04:00 PM (view original):
You're A+ prestige, D1 and you are limiting yourself to the 360 mile  radius for recruits? That is more of your problem. If I had that prestige I'd be in other schools neighborhoods taking what they got.

says the guy whose never been there...

Posted by professor17 on 1/8/2012 4:00:00 PM (view original):

Posted by lmschwarz on 1/8/2012 10:33:00 AM (view original):
Although I'm not an A+ program at my Colortado (Phelan), I feel the same way. If the recruit generator gives me quality recruits within 360 miles I'll have a good class, if not, I may get one very good recruit outside the area, but not the two or three needed to compete on a national level. Having Syracuse on Knight, I rarely have that problem as the northeast usually has plenty of recruits. The problem in the northeast, however, is the high number of quality programs competing for said recruits. So each area has its good points and bad points.

Whenever I first break into BCS-level schools in a world, I've always been intrigued about possibly coaching at Colorado, since I believe it is the only mainland BCS school that does not have any other BCS schools within it's 360-mile radius. I always figured that once the prestige got up, the whole state could become an impenetrable fortress, and the Buffs would be virtually assured of every good recruit that came out of there and Wyoming with (hopefully) little recruiting effort, leaving vast resources for expanding outward if needed (or so the plan went, in theory, anyway!). Of course, if no good recruits get generated in Colorado, then that changes things a bit! I applied once, but didn't get the job. Maybe someday...

i coached at colorado once, it was the 2nd d1 school i ever coached. it actually caused quite an uproar at the time. i had a pretty strong MWC nearby, but still, was quickly able to take the reigns of the area. you have enough d1 recruits within 360 miles that you are generally speaking the most powerful school in the country, to recruit solidly. well, the far from home preference was not around then, which does change the game somewhat. but basically when you get to a B+ or so, you generally have a good upper hand even against the best A+ school in the nation, and there are no other BCS schools close. but anyway, there is a large enough base of recruits that with a great recruit generation for you, you can get a pretty awesome class. one year, i had IMO 3 of the top 6 recruits nationally over in Provo, Utah (WIS had them as 3 of the top 25), and i believe 3-4 other top 50 recruits were nearby. that led to the best soph class i've had, by a lot, and hence the uproar.

however, the problem with colorado is, that base of recruits is not so large as to guarantee you a stop on the bottom end, like schools on the east coast have. you can have, like AZ or CA schools often complain about, zero or 1 top caliber recruits, and often just a couple who you could even conceive recruiting to a high BCS caliber program. recruiting nationally is very difficult, but by carefully managing your walkon situation, you can come out in decent shape.

on the whole, i would not expect an a+ colorado to be as consistently good as an a+ school in a fertile area, without a ridiculous level of competition. however, i would expect a b+ colorado to be as consistently good or better than a b+ school in a fertile area. there is just little benefit of going from b+ to a+ there, compared to other schools.

its definitely an interesting place to coach, though. if you have a bad-*** MWC, it would not be a great destination, but with a mediocre or less MWC, its a pretty good spot. not the best, but solid. just expect regular frustration... and a relatively low-level of excitement during recruiting.

Posted by professor17 on 1/7/2012 1:46:00 PM (view original):
Never said I was limiting myself. Do you not agree that if two-thirds of the time there are no quality recruits in your 360-mile radius, it makes things more difficult, especially from a consistency standpoint? Especially out west, where the recruit density is low. That's really the core question of this thread. What is better...  having an A+ baseline in a low recruit-density area where two-thirds of the time you're not going to have any quality local recruits, or a B/B+/A- baseline in a more talent-rich recruiting area? Which would you choose? And I'm talking baseline prestiges, here, not current prestige.

dont bother. skunk has a long history of telling coaches how to recruit in situations he's never been in. before he went to d1, he would post in nearly every d1 recruiting thread, letting the posters know why they were idiots for doing what they were doing, and what they should be doing. of course, when challenged, he would resort that his handful of d2 championships meant he was god's gift to HD and that no coach in their right mind would question if he was a better d1 coach/recruiter than them, despite the fact he had 0 wins in d1 at the time and 0 recruits signed. i believe he was moving up to d1 to show us all what idiots we were, that his d2 experience counted fully in assessing d1 situations, and that d1 is in fact dramatically easier than d2 - but apparently, that plan has not gone as expected.

I always get a chuckle reading skunk's post. Ofc professor17, with all those D1 titles, have no idea how to recruit at d1...

arizona is very frustrating - especially if you have strong human coaches at ASU, UCLA, USC

I've been very inconsistent there - sometimes I can recruit well and have some good years, but then I hit a patch where the season when I have lots of openings there is no one to recruit and we fall apart.  I'd move to Maryland in a moment, but then again I am a terps fan.  I'd move to any of several other top programs, but right now I have a strong bunch at Zona in Knight and I'm enjoying it.  We'll be awful in three years or so.

Here's my 2 cents, as Prof's conference-mate in Phelan. Prof - with your skill set, you coach where you want to coach. If you're tired of Arizona, can it and move on. Keep it fresh, keep it fun.  You'll do well wherever you end up.  If you're not doing AS well as you did at U of A, who cares?  Move on again.  I've only been in Phelan, and only had a few D1 schools, so my advice on how to recruit, to a guy who always out-recruits me, would be laughable.  I can say, however, that when I was at LSU I was able to recruit better than my prestige due to being somewhat isolated, but being able to jump into Texas and neighboring states for a few guys.  That was before the SEC descended into the 7th or 8th best conference each season for post-season cash.  My point being, if you move on, try to find a school that is in a conference that makes money, and doesn't overlap too much with a conference like ACC in Phelan where they come close to doubling the recruiting cash of the next closest conference every season.  Other than that, the world is your oyster, my friend!