Successful recruiting takes endless effort

Pitt women’s basketball coach Agnus Berenato calls it the triple team. She doesn’t use it on… Pitt women’s basketball coach Agnus Berenato calls it the triple team. She doesn’t use it on every player ‘- only the best. It can happen in an empty high school gym or it can happen in a crowded living room, doesn’t matter. It’s like a full-court press, without the pressure, of course. It’s three Pitt coaches together in one spot anywhere across the country trying to recruit a teenager to come and play basketball for Pitt. ‘If they’re the really big recruit, I’ll make a statement and triple team them,’ said Berenato. ‘You have three coaches out on the road [recruiting] at any one time, and that makes a huge statement because we’re all at your game. We’re at no one else’s game. That means there’s no one else more important.’ College recruiting is an odyssey. It’s the one thing Berenato thinks makes college coaches get out of the game. Not pressure to win, not losing ‘mdash; scouring the country for elite high school players, getting to them before anyone else and then trying to sell your university as their best viable option for their future in both athletics and academics. If it sounds like a glorified sales pitch that is because, as Berenato’s noticed over the past several years, recruits and their families are becoming more like shoppers. ‘I think the kids today, they’re into recruiting. They enjoy it. The parents like it,’ said Berenato. ‘They want to see what you have to offer. They’re good consumers. They’re all about shopping for the best deal.’ But what makes the best deal? There are countless factors in play when courting recruits: early playing time, program history, location, academics, coaching, facilities ‘mdash; it’s an endless, dynamic process that’s not final until a recruit signs a binding National Letter of Intent to attend and play for the school they decide is best. Every college coaching staff must do it, and every staff must work to make themselves and the school they’re representing stand out to a teenager receiving similar pitches from 10 to 30 ‘- maybe more ‘- other programs. The key to making a lasting impression, according to men’s basketball associate head coach Tom Herrion, is finding and recruiting players as early in their careers as possible, without breaking any NCAA regulations ‘mdash; a coach can only contact a recruit during certain windows ‘mdash; and keeping on them once they do. ‘There’s a number of ways that you find out about players. Hopefully the first opportunity is through the eye, seeing him at a camp or a game or an AAU event,’ said Herrion, who recruited current Pitt basketball players Jermaine Dixon, Dwight Miller and Ashton Gibbs as well as Pitt commit Dante Taylor, a national top-25 recruit. ‘The way the system in recruiting has been expedited, it’s more important that you’re on young kids. ‘You do a lot of leg work, a lot of phone work in terms of making contact with the coach of a young man if we have interest,’ he said. ‘We’ll follow up with a bunch of calls with somebody close to him, whether it’s an AAU coach or a high school coach.’ The AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) is a non-profit national organization that sponsors athletic events in many sports across the country. It’s especially prevalent in basketball recruiting because nearly every top recruit will play and travel in the summer for an AAU team ‘mdash; like the New York Gauchos or the D.C. Assault ‘mdash; to compete at a high level and hope to get noticed by scouts at tournaments or camps. The main reason Herrion said the recruiting process has been expedited is the genesis of Internet recruiting services such as Rivals and Scout. These services rank and evaluate thousands of players across the nation, provide instant information on when a recruit verbally commits to play for a school and insider reports and analysis that coaches, recruits and their families troll. None of it was here 10 years ago when Herrion was an assistant under Pete Gillen at Providence. ‘The age of communication now, it’s so instant,’ he said. ‘There’s less unknowns nowadays because of the Internet and the exposure that kids get. It’s so instant how much information is out there on a particular young man. It’s a different generation. They’re exposed to so many different things. There’s so much instant gratification for kids today. They want everything yesterday. There’s no patience in the recruit industry.’ ‘ ‘ ‘ The Internet wave is the biggest in football recruiting. Because of obvious weather restrictions and risk of injury, no football recruit plays year-round like basketball players can. To get noticed outside of their high school games, they can attend scouting combines, often sponsored by shoe companies like Nike, along with Scout or Rivals. That’s where Pitt found out about defensive end Jabaal Sheard, at a Nike/Rivals combine in Miami in 2006. ‘They watched me run, and [former Pitt assistant coach Charlie] Partridge saw me run, and he seemed like a real cool dude. Then the process started,’ said Sheard. ‘He would come to my house, show me a lot of interest, call me on the phone. I felt like I was a real interest, like Pitt could use me there.’ That wasn’t the end of the process for Sheard, by any means. As much as Internet services influence recruiting decisions now, personal communication is still the key. Pitt coach Dave Wannstedt, hailed for his recruiting prowess and bringing in consistently strong recruiting classes since he was hired in 2005, came to Sheard’s Hollywood, Fla., home and impressed his entire family. ‘My mom seemed to like him,’ said Sheard. ‘Plus he was the Dolphins coach, and I’m a Dolphins fan, so I grew up watching him. He compared me a lot to Jason Taylor, and I liked that role. I’ve always admired Jason Taylor. That clicked.’ Not every coach has such clout, though, and can’t throw around names like Taylor, an all-pro NFL defensive end. Berenato certainly couldn’t when she and assistant Jeff Williams first inherited the Pitt women’s basketball program in 2003 after a three-win season. ‘We truly were out every day,’ she said. ‘I mean, sometimes we’d get up at 4 a.m., do a school in the morning and then fly and be somewhere at night. We had 10 or 11 early signings we went after, and we didn’t get one commitment.’ So Berenato went with what brought her to Pitt ‘- a family mentality. Show a player support, show them that you believe in them, and they’ll believe in you. That was enough to get two players named Marcedes Walker and Shavonte Zellous ‘- arguably the two best players in program history ‘- to come to Pitt, now a respected program and NCAA Tournament fixture. ‘Now it’s different. We have some players,’ said Berenato. ‘We knew we were going to turn the program around. We looked at you and told you, ‘You could be the best player in the world.’ I look back and think, ‘What was I thinking?’ Now six years later, it’s really hard. ‘You have to find the one thing. Who’s the key person? Is it the mom? Is it the dad? Is it the AAU coach or high school coach? It’s unbelievable.’