How Much of Coaching is Recruiting?

[airowe]

I've seen different opinions on the subject from basketball people that I trust, including many on this board. In college basketball, getting the uber talented can make a bad coach look good, a good coach look great, and a great coach look like the GOAT.

With some recruiting misses over the last decade, Coach K was still able to coach his Duke teams to the most wins ever in a 10 year span but couldn't make it to the Final Four for a 5 year stretch, the longest of his career.

I always hear, and somewhat agree with the contention that guys like roy and calipari excel at recruiting but come short of the great ones with regards to the Xs and Os and other aspects of the game, but does that make them a bad coach? If such a big part of a college basketball coach's success predicated on how successful they are in the recruiting world, can a great recruiter truly be considered a bad coach?

[camion]

After much study I conclude that recruiting is 42.63% of college coaching. If I believed that winning was the only measure of coaching then I would have it at 63.41%.

I strive for precision. Accuracy, not so much. :)

[kong123]

there are different factors that go into making a great coach. i think recruiting is obviously one of those factors and one that- if the coach excels in that area- can gloss over a deficiency.

ultimately, success dictates whether a coach is either good or great, and there are many different ways to be successful.

[airowe]

After much study I conclude that recruiting is 42.63% of college coaching. If I believed that winning was the only measure of coaching then I would have it at 63.41%.

I strive for precision. Accuracy, not so much. :)

67% of statistics are made up on the spot.

[ElSid]

In order of importance:

1. Recruiting talent
2. Motivating / guiding the talent
3. X's and O's

Those three things make a good coach.

What makes a great coach is the ability to replicate this success over a long period of time. Number 1 enjoys a nice snowball effect that can sustain a program like Roy's for a long time. Numbers 2 and 3 are things that need to be adjusted every year.

In the NBA, talent trumps everything but you need a Jackson/Zen thing to keep talent happy. It's a similar equation, I think, you just don't "recruit", you trade and draft to fill needs on your team.

[JasonEvans]

It is worth noting that recruiting includes getting the RIGHT KIND of kids into your program. Kids who fit with your schemes, fit with your current roster, kids who fit together themselves, kids who are teachable and can grow as players, kids who fit with your school and its personality also matters. It is not only grabbing the highest rated player you can at each position.

A great coach with lousy recruits will not be very successful. A lousy coach with great recruits will not be very successful either. That said, I think it is a very important part of being a good college coach. It may be the single most important factor in the highest levels of success. If you are not a good recruiter, I think there are limits in what your team can achieve. On the other hand, we have seen some guys who were pretty mediocre coaches do some pretty impressive things by just rolling the ball out there and letting his crop of stud recruits pick it up and run with it.

--Jason "I can live with the 42.63% figure... that makes sense to me ;) " Evans

[JasonEvans]

I am surprised that people are dumping on Roy Williams so much lately and implying he is a recruiter but not a good coach. This past season was a rough one for him, but his track record over the past 20 years is tremendously impressive and shows a guy who not only can recruit but can also get those recruits to play good, well-coached basketball.

Roy may be a little bit stuck in his schemes and tried to fit some square pegs into round holes this past season, but there are plenty of coaches like that. Many would say K did the same thing for several years a few years ago.

-Jason "I am no Roy fan, but implying he does not know X & Os is just silly, IMO" Evans

[Tim1515]

there are different factors that go into making a great coach. i think recruiting is obviously one of those factors and one that- if the coach excels in that area- can gloss over a deficiency.

ultimately, success dictates whether a coach is either good or great, and there are many different ways to be successful.

There are also different factors that go into recruiting.

Bill Self said before last year that recruiting current players into staying is more important then new recruits. Keeping Cole and Sherron one more year "could've" given him another title.

As someone basically said, K recruits character first. He takes talented character kids and puts them in a system that works for them to be successful.

Roy tends to recruit kids that excel in HIS system...but he is extremely good at it.

[dukeballboy88]

If you cant coach then you better be able to recruit. being a used car salesman can keep you in the top 10 for the majority of your career.

you need alot of luck too. just like unc in 05 wasnt even the best team in the state and in 08 all four #1 seeds make it to the final four and UNC was the worst team there. But next year they were the only team to not loose their entire roster to the NBA. So if you can keep it in the road eventually you will get to where your going!

[ElSid]

I am surprised that people are dumping on Roy Williams so much lately and implying he is a recruiter but not a good coach. This past season was a rough one for him, but his track record over the past 20 years is tremendously impressive and shows a guy who not only can recruit but can also get those recruits to play good, well-coached basketball.

Roy may be a little bit stuck in his schemes and tried to fit some square pegs into round holes this past season, but there are plenty of coaches like that. Many would say K did the same thing for several years a few years ago.

-Jason "I am no Roy fan, but implying he does not know X & Os is just silly, IMO" Evans

I guess that's true and we'll all eat crow when/if he comes back with a vengeance. I wouldn't pile on as much if he didn't sound confused and demented during his media appearances this past year. He had the sound of someone who didn't understand the problem he faced.

My group of Duke friends did sort of accuse Coach K of falling into patterns. We questioned his recruiting. But Coach K won a TON of games, made the tourney, and never sounded crazy. He had everything in perspective and made public comments acknowledging his need to shake some things up. Specifically, he acknowledged that there was a lot of dislike for his program and they were going to look at some PR changes to try to affect that positively. Contrast that with Roy, whose inconsistency and general out-there-ness is well documented on this board. So yeah. He's good at stuff but he seemed like a lost soul last season and that wouldn't inspire confidence in me as a fan...which kong admitted was his sentiment, basically.

[Kedsy]

If such a big part of a college basketball coach's success predicated on how successful they are in the recruiting world, can a great recruiter truly be considered a bad coach?

It's a definitional issue. In my mind there's a difference between a "good" coach and a "successful" coach (although even "successful" could have various meanings).

The first issue you have to deal with when assessing coaching is how much weight you put on intangible factors like do you play by all the rules with integrity, do the kids have fun, are they true student-athletes, and are they prepared for life after basketball. Obviously neither recruiting or even winning play that much of a factor in those sorts of things. For the purposes of this argument, though, I will assume these intangibles don't count at all (because they're so subjective and anecdotal; too difficult to measure and compare).

So, putting that aside, I would define "success" as a coach in terms of wins and big wins (i.e., NCAAT). Recruiting plays a huge factor in that, although not all good recruiters are successful in this sense (look at this year's Georgia Tech squad). But we still haven't gotten to "good" vs. "bad" coaches.

In my mind, if you wanted to measure whether someone was a "better" or "worse" coach than someone else, you'd have to give each of them identical teams (or as close to identical as possible) and see which one had more success (in terms of wins and losses). Obviously that's not possible in real life, but it seems to me the best coaches are the ones who can turn less than top of the line talent into a top of the line team.

I believe there are several factors that go into whether a coach is "good." Primarily these can be grouped into (a) teaching, (b) motivating, (c) game preparation/strategy, and (d) in-game Xs-and-Os (which is what many people talk about when they say so-and-so is a good coach or a bad coach but which I think is the least important factor here).

Very few coaches excel in all of these areas. K, for example, seems to be only fair in his in-game X-and-O type decisions, but his teams are usually very well-drilled, his game preparation/strategy is stellar, and his ability to motivate is one of the best of all time. He would be a "good" coach no matter what talent he was able to recruit.

Calipari's teams don't usually seem very well-drilled or strong in fundamentals, and I would rate his game preparation and Xs-and-Os as above average but not outstanding. He does appear to be a pretty good motivator, although he appeared to have a few problems this past season. He's a decent coach although I wouldn't rate him as a "good" coach, but he is certainly a "successful" coach (at least in win/loss record, as I defined it above) because he makes up for his inadequacies with great recruiting.

Not sure if I answered your question, but those are my thoughts on the subject.

[Big Pappa]

I am surprised that people are dumping on Roy Williams so much lately and implying he is a recruiter but not a good coach. This past season was a rough one for him, but his track record over the past 20 years is tremendously impressive and shows a guy who not only can recruit but can also get those recruits to play good, well-coached basketball.

Roy may be a little bit stuck in his schemes and tried to fit some square pegs into round holes this past season, but there are plenty of coaches like that. Many would say K did the same thing for several years a few years ago.

-Jason "I am no Roy fan, but implying he does not know X & Os is just silly, IMO" Evans

I could not agree more with you. Calling a future HOF guy a horrible coach is ridiculous. I don't like Roy in the least, but he can recruit and coach at a very high level. You don't just fall backwards into the success he has had.

Being able to Coach a ridiculously talented 04'-05' team to the ship, then lose your top 7 scorers and be named COY the next year. Then in 07 and 08 he sweeps both conference titles.

You have to stop saying that Roy can't coach. He may be a horrible person, he may be a weak interview, but he can obviously coach. For me, it is literally painful to list his accomplishments on here, but they speak for themselves.

[kong123]

I could not agree more with you. Calling a future HOF guy a horrible coach is ridiculous.

2007 Hall of Fame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCjpmB2eFEw

[airowe]

I believe there are several factors that go into whether a coach is "good." Primarily these can be grouped into (a) teaching, (b) motivating, (c) game preparation/strategy, and (d) in-game Xs-and-Os (which is what many people talk about when they say so-and-so is a good coach or a bad coach but which I think is the least important factor here).


This is the crux of my discussion. I'm trying to frame the argument here because I've seen a few people on this board come out and make sweeping statements that roy is a horrible coach or calipari is nothing but a recruiter, and that he can't coach. You never hear someone say, Coach K is a great motivator, but he's a horrible coach. Or Boeheim is a wonderful Xs and Os guy, but he's a sorry excuse for a coach.

To me, recruiting and coaching are inseparable, especially in the college basketball world.

As JasonEvans posted, there are different ways to judge recruiting success, but using one matrix or another, saying that someone is a great recruiter but a bad coach is about the same as saying someone is good at buying ingredients for a meal, but is a horrible cook. You can be a good cook by accentuating subpar ingredients with a little spice here and there, but you can't make steak tartare with expired hamburger from Food Lion.

[JasonEvans]

As JasonEvans posted, there are different ways to judge recruiting success, but using one matrix or another, saying that someone is a great recruiter but a bad coach is about the same as saying someone is good at buying ingredients for a meal, but is a horrible cook. You can be a good cook by accentuating subpar ingredients with a little spice here and there, but you can't make steak tartare with expired hamburger from Food Lion.

This discussion should now be locked, because it don't get any better than the above analogy.

--Jason "props airowe!" Evans

[rthomas]

Bobby Cremins.

[Osiagledknarf]

I think it is a lot to do with coaching. No more of a cook you are, you can't make a good dinner without quality food. Talent is a huge huge part of college basketball. But when you look at this year and year's back at the NCAA tournament you have teams like George Mason, Davidson, Northern Iowa, and even a team like Michigan State who no one really expects to be there at the end yet there. Teams like Duke, UNC, Kansas, Texas etc have players that are a lot more talented then those teams do for the most part, but it all about being able to get your team up day after day.

Then you teams like Kentucky of this year who had by far the most talented out of any team this year, period... Yet they get bounced in the elite 8 because John Calipari can't seem to blend that talent together to make a run at which on talent level along wasn't even close with WVU.

Same thing with UNC this year. They have 7 Macdonald All Americans and finish in the basement off the ACC this year. I know they had injuries, but with that amount of talent there, that team should be able to make the NCAA Tournament easily in an ACC that was rather weak for ACC standards this year.

So I would say it is 50 50 on this. Talent is big to compete, but being able to manage a team, being able to coach X's and O's, be able to have your players buy into your system etc.. Is a very very important thing.

[mkirsh]

To me, recruiting and coaching are inseparable, especially in the college basketball world.


I agree with you, but most people do make this distinction. Gary Williams was the runaway winner for ACC Coach of the Year this year, mainly because he finished tied for the regular season title but he did it with "less talent" than what Duke had, implying his superior "coaching" effort for the year. No one really argued that he was the one responsible for recruiting that talent.

[G man]

I think that recruiting does not make you a good coach. I believe the two are separate categories. I believe that being good at one helps with the other, but they are not the same. The ability to get your players to play smart and to the best of their ability while placing the team in the best position to win is good coaching. I for one do not think they are the same. For example many around this board recognize that scum bucket down at CH is a great recruiter, but most of us would say that he did not do a good job of coaching his players this year!

[sagegrouse]

I think that recruiting does not make you a good coach. I believe the two are separate categories. I believe that being good at one helps with the other, but they are not the same. The ability to get your players to play smart and to the best of their ability while placing the team in the best position to win is good coaching. I for one do not think they are the same. For example many around this board recognize that scum bucket down at CH is a great recruiter, but most of us would say that he did not do a good job of coaching his players this year!

Coaching and recruiting IMHO (with the Grouse the H is often silent) are related in two ways. Great coaches are strong motivators and leaders and hugely knowledgeable about the game. All of that works really well in recruiting.

But more to the point, great coaches get really good results, and over time, they build a program that players want to be part of.

I don't think, for example, that Knight and Rupp were great recruiters in the conventional sense, but they sure attracted a lot of great players who wanted to play at IU or Kentucky.

You might say the same thing about Wooden, but he was both loved and respected at UCLA, in comparison to the tempestuous Bobby and the irascible Adolph. Wooden may have been a wonderful recruiter on his own.

sagegrouse
'Adolph told Jeff Mullins, a New Yorker who was ending his HS career in Lexington, to sign up now or forget about Kentucky. Jeff found it easy to forget the Wildcats'

[-bdbd]

It is worth noting that recruiting includes getting the RIGHT KIND of kids into your program. Kids who fit with your schemes, fit with your current roster, kids who fit together themselves, kids who are teachable and can grow as players, kids who fit with your school and its personality also matters. It is not only grabbing the highest rated player you can at each position.
A great coach with lousy recruits will not be very successful. A lousy coach with great recruits will not be very successful either. That said, I think it is a very important part of being a good college coach. It may be the single most important factor in the highest levels of success. If you are not a good recruiter, I think there are limits in what your team can achieve. On the other hand, we have seen some guys who were pretty mediocre coaches do some pretty impressive things by just rolling the ball out there and letting his crop of stud recruits pick it up and run with it.

--Jason "I can live with the 42.63% figure... that makes sense to me ;) " Evans

I agree with Jason. The ability to envision how the various pieces will mesh is a terribly underappreciated talent in recruiting, and has long been a key K stregth - seeing good chemistry and overall team meshing 2-3-4-5 years in advance. Also, different coaches have different strengths, such as recruiting (Cremmins, Huck, Calipari, Self) and X&O's (Boeheim, Knight, etc), and other still stronger in motivation (Gary Williams?), prep, crunch-time performance (Izzo?) and PR aspects. But it is truly special to see the coach who seems to excell at all of these aspects (think The Wizard of Westwood, Hall, Dean-o, K, and maybe a couple others).

But ours truly is a Special-K when it comes to anticipating the mix of personalities, talents, attitude, etc which will optimize team performance. I've long thought that, say, over the last 25 years, our neighbors down the road have generally had superior raw talent... BUT K has had the better overall results b/c of his ability to see how that talent will come together (and then directing/coaching/motivating it to do so).

I am frequently amazed to see how he/they saw that so many years in advance, even anticipating other pieces that wrere yet to come (such as in later classes).

[JG Nothing]

With some recruiting misses over the last decade, Coach K was still able to coach his Duke teams to the most wins ever in a 10 year span but couldn't make it to the Final Four for a 5 year stretch, the longest of his career.


Even though K misses on some recruits, his teams are still dominated by All Americans and top 50 talent. You can probably count on one hand the number of recruited Duke players who were not top 75 prospects over the past ten years.

[airowe]

Even though K misses on some recruits, his teams are still dominated by All Americans and top 50 talent. You can probably count on one hand the number of recruited Duke players who were not top 75 prospects over the past ten years.

That's one measure of recruiting. As JasonEvans has stated, there are many different ways to measure a recruiting class...