So this recruitment is not on the up and up?
Is that why is he picking Wake?
And I thought his mom wanted him to stay local.
So much for that (unless mom is getting a cut).
There are 2 paths in recruiting..family and AAU....somewhere along the way, most Top 100 immediate impact kids are going to get a free education and it's very rare that the family has 100% say on the school. It is much easier to recruit the one side that a school feels is the best path of success and in most cases, it will tell you which way a recruiting process will go. To be fair, Wake already has a Top 100-150 type recruit from the same AAU program last year (Mucius) so it could be just as simple as Wake having a more established relationship with their program....whether its Nike or Adidas etc
That is not implying that the parents have absolutely no say, but there is nothing inherently wrong with picking Wake Forest....the inital rumblings were that schools like LSU and Auburn, have lengthy reputations over decades of being willing to push the boundaries to get some recruits...and when Auburn was the reported leader and the one of the final 5 schools on a list where academics are considered to be a factor, it was clear to me that just being close to home wasn't the main factor....and neither was it solely academics, otherwise Harvard would be a stronger and longer term choice by the player, well beyond just basketball.
RU has done a tremendous job in recruiting and the recruits landed already (Baker, Mathis, Doucoure, McConnell, Kiss, Young, Harper Jr, Myles Johnson, Mulcahy etc), all are more than enough evidence that RU can recruit.
In some cases however if there are 4 excellent choices of basketball and academics in front of you and you can't really go wrong with any of them, these items do happen most (not all) but most of the time if the parents are fine with any of the options....and if it's a recruit at this level (Top 100 range).
There are enough good basketball players and recruitments where the staff, school, being in the B1G, tristate area, is more than enough for a recruit to decide that RU makes sense....but Wisconsin, Northwestern, Virginia, Notre Dame, Stanford, Harvard can stand alone and develop players and win games, without diving into this realm....i believe that this is truly the best path for a RU to take in recruiting and building a program vs the other route....
It will just take 3 to 4 hard working kids a year to get it rebuilt and i believe there are enough of those types of kids to get it done. I am certain Massoud fits that profile and was 100% worth the effort of recruiting him. But recruiting items that usually change so rapidly, happens for a reason.
