Fall Recruiting Home Stretch – Montana State Women

With the Basketball Fall signing period about one month away, schools are on the home stretch of completing their fall signing classes. I am going to look at where the four schools currently stand with commitments, what I think they have left to get signed and who some of the prospects are they maybe looking at. Part 1 Will be the Montana State Men’s program, Part 2 will be the Montana States Women’s program, Part 3 will be the University of Montana Men’s Program and the Part 4 will be the Lady Griz program.

Projected Scholarships Available: 5

Known commitments: 4
The following players have already committed to the Bobcat Women’s program

Fall Recruiting Home Stretch – Montana State Men

With the Basketball Fall signing period about one month away, schools are on the home stretch of completing their fall signing classes. I am going to look at where the four schools currently stand with commitments, what I think they have left to get signed and who some of the prospects are they maybe looking at. Part 1 Will be the Montana State Men’s program, Part 2 will be the Montana States Women’s program, Part 3 will be the University of Montana Men’s Program and the Part 4 will be the Lady Griz program.

Projected Scholarships Available: 3

Known commitments: 2
The following players have already committed to the Bobcat Men’s program

Signing day Odds and ends

I really have not done an odds and ends post in quite some time, mainly because I have not been coming across enough little pieces of info that would warrant a whole column, but here is one.

• I forgot to mention that a few other Montana high school athletes should be signing letter of intents with Division teams today, Namely Josh Huestis with the Stanford men’s program and Jordan Phau with Weber State women’s program. If I have missed someone please let me know.

• To my surprise Libby’s 6-1 forward Jackie Mee will not sign with a d-1 team this fall. In my humble (and sometime wrong) opinion she is at least as talented as some of the Montana women who will be signing today. Before I get hate mail this is not a knock on any one, but an acknowledgment that Mee is a very good player.

• There was a nice article on Bobcat recruit /Signee Casey Trujeque and two other of his Price high school teammates were featured in a LA Times article yesterday. The main thrust of the article was about how tiny Price high school will have three players signing letters of intent today with Division 1 schools. One thing to remember though, while Price has a student population of about 100, for some odd reason a lot of the better high school students in the area seem to find themselves at Price high school. Imagine that!

For the record: Price’s, Richard Solomon and Allen Crabbe will sign with California and Casey Trujeque will sign with Montana State.

Go here to read the whole article.

Recruiting calendar: Football

I have been doing an ongoing series concerning the basketball recruiting calendar and what happensduring each phase. ESPN / scout.com’s JC Shurburtt has a pretty good article on the football calendar. Here is what he wrights about the activities that take place in September.

September

NCAA recruiting calendar
The fall evaluation period begins Sept. 1. Not exceeding a period of 42 evaluation days (54 for U.S. service academies) during the months of September, October and November selected at the discretion of the institution and designated in writing in the office of the director of athletics; authorized off-campus recruiters shall not visit a prospective student-athlete’s educational institution on more than one calendar day during this period. All other dates shall be considered a quiet period.

Recruiting Calendar: September (Time to get busy)

With the coming of September, it is time for basketball coaches to get really busy. Not only are they welcoming their 2009-10 team to campuses but recruiting gets very serious. The two key time elements that come to play are the start of fall semester, and the start of the contact period.

With the start of class coaches can now invite recruits in for official visits. The official visit, in most cases, is the single most important element of the recruiting process. There have been many times when a prospect has done a 180 either for good or bad after an official visit. Example last year was Jeff Budinich who was really leaning heavily to committing to Eastern Washington and almost canceled his trip to MSU. He committed to MSU 2 days after his visit to Montana State.

There is a lot of strategy involved in scheduling trips. Do you try to schedule before or after a competitor? Which kids do you bring in which kids. Do you bring prospects for the same positions? Do you bring in commits with prospects? What is happening on campus and can you get certain prospects in to take advantage of it? The list goes on but at both Montana schools the biggest factor is football home games. There are some exceptions but, getting prospects in for home football games is one of the best selling points for either school. At the U. of Montana, I think it is a law written somewhere. Of course the football weekend of all basketball recruiting football week end is Homecoming week end. Look for already committed players, and high priority prospects to come in on those dates. Another rule of thumb is get the higher priority kids in early, so you know if you need to move on.