MADISON, Wis. – While the exact number is a mystery to him, Wisconsin men’s basketball coach Greg Gard estimates he’s helped recruit around 75 scholarship and walk-on athletes to the program since arriving on campus nearly 20 years ago.
The one number he is positive about is that zero of those recruits received their offer before he or the staff saw them in person at one of Wisconsin’s on-campus camps or in an AAU event somewhere in the country.
“We’ve never signed somebody we haven’t watched in person,” Gard told BadgerBlitz.com. “In my time here on staff, going back 18-19 years, at least somebody on the staff had seen (a player) live.”
Offering prospects without a prior relationship is an adjustment that Gard, his coaches and colleges across the country are having to consider with the full cancelation of the offseason recruiting periods in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it was a necessity for the NCAA to cancel the April spring evaluation period - UW also decided to cancel all youth programs through mid-August - the reality of no AAU events hit home late last month when the Division 1 Council Coordination Committee extended the recruiting dead period through July 31.
Instead of hosting high school prospects on campus and finalizing a summer travel schedule that would include trips to Las Vegas, South Carolina and everywhere in between, Gard and his assistants have been relegated to phone and Zoom calls, text messaging, emails and social media.
“I’d prefer to offer scholarships face-to-face, eyeball-to-eyeball, and not throw them out like Halloween candy,” Gard said. “That’s just how I’ve developed. It doesn’t always work that way, but it’s always been, for the most part, people we’ve got to see live. Depending on how this goes and how things change with new restrictions with in-person recruiting and visits, you have to be flexible with change.”
While AAU and camp events are just one piece of the recruiting puzzle, removing those from the schedule eliminates the ability for coaches to see how potential targets handle competing against similar or better competition. It’s a pairing of talent that isn’t as prevalent in high school, where equal matchups don’t usually exist on a game-by-game basis.
“In AAU, you can do mass evaluation,” Gard said. “You could be watching 8, 10, 12 games a day in a tournament field or bouncing around the country. You can see a lot in a short amount of time. There’s disadvantages to that, too, in that you see the best of the kid and the worst of a kid. Because they play so much, you take all things into account.”
The one avenue still available to Gard is full high school tapes, an option not always fully utilized because of time constraints or the option of seeing a player live. While highlight tapes are a good conversation starter, a full game tape will reveal the entire picture of a player in terms of strengths, weaknesses, good habits and bad.
“Everybody makes all their shots on a highlight tape, but I want to see how they play without the ball and how they play defensively,” Gard said. “We’ve done probably more full game analysis in the last couple months because we’ve had the time to do it.”
While it’s a tough adjustment to make, the Badgers can say they are in better shape than many other programs around the country that were relying on this summer to help fill out the 2021 recruiting class. After signing six players last year, UW had three 2021 prospects committed by late September – Illinois forward Chris Hodges, Nebraska point guard Chucky Hepburn and South Dakota forward Matthew Mors.
“With six seniors next season and three guys committed in ’21, while we’re minimized in things we can do and where we can go, we have been pretty well positioned in what we were able to accomplish to this point,” Gard said. “You accept and find other avenues to talk to kids. Recruiting hasn’t stopped, it’s just changed with everything being virtual.”
While UW can’t meet players in person, Gard said most of the players Wisconsin is currently recruiting and building relationships with have already had face-to-face meetings with the staff and visited the school prior to the mid-March lockdown. The Badgers have room for at least one more scholarship player in the 2021 class and recently extended an offer to Illinois shooting guard Louis Lesmond.
It’s likely that Gard will hold at least one scholarship for the 2022 cycle. In the unlikely event Wisconsin gets commitments from three more players in the 2021 class, the Badgers, at least on paper, wouldn’t have an available scholarship for 2022.
The process remains fluid because the staff hasn’t had a chance to fully interact with its incoming freshmen, something Gard hopes he’ll be able to do by the end of the month on a limited in-person basis.
“Typically, how that impacts the future is how those newcomers work and how they integrate with your current roster and what their strengths or weaknesses are,” Gard said. “That either solidifies or changes what your plans are going forward. That’s one disadvantage of not having the in-person recruiting and in-person time you have with your team. That helps you see what your needs are for the future.”
