NAU v. Montana Game Thread

[grizindabox]

temp, but that is still a low number or in state Div 1 basketball players, and if you subtract the ones that UM really did not have a shot at, whether they signed to play basketball at a larger program or play a different sport, it is definitely not enough to base a program on. You complain that Montana does not have enough home grown kids, but the numbers they realistically had a shot at is small. They had no shot at Heustis, Edwards, Osweiler, or Roderick. I still don't think Garland was a Div 1 player. Emerson seems pretty borderline, and I am not really sure how Bradshaw will pan out. Montana has a limited number of D1 kids, and it is not enough to provide a backbone to the Griz or Cats.

 

[Word]

Statistically speaking, by your count temp of 5 scholarship players, one out of every 912 D1 scholarship players is from Montana. In contrast, one out of every 317 Americans is from Montana.

So, if high school basketball in Montana was average, there should by three times the number of kids getting D1 basketball scholarships than currently, 15 overall, 3-4 per class.

As to how good Montana high school basketball is and how deserving kids are of scholarships, I'm sure the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. Not quite good enough for 3-4 per class, but not quite as bad as 1 per class.

EDIT: Also, if high school basketball was average in Montana, there would be 15 Montana kids to fill 26 scholarship spots between UM and MSU, assuming none left the State. That speaks volumes. Montana's population can only truly fill one D1 roster and there are two D1 universities. So, the programs will always have to be highly reliant on talent coming from elsewhere.

 

[temp]

A scholarship offer boils down to two things. Talent plus exposure. Having the skills and a person of importance noticing said skills.

Football, wrestling (so I am told) track and all of the girls sports have continued to produce the same number and level of athletes that they always have. It makes no sense that boys basketball and boys basketball alone has become poor in this state in the last 10 to 15 years.

What has changed in the past 10 to 15 years is the way basketball players are recruited. In the past the way coaches found talent was by looking in their own backyard. That was the easiest and most cost effective way. When they got done searching their own yard they moved to their next door neighbors yard. With the advent of AAU summer basketball, recruiting drastically changed. Now the easiest and most cost effective way to find players is to spend your July at AAU tournaments. There, coaches can watch hundreds of kids in the same building during the same week. They can see them play several times against players of similar caliber without having to change hotel rooms.

That is great for the coaches because they get to see and compare kids of all shapes and sizes from all over the nation. The one thing they won't see though, is Montana kids. With a small population spread over a huge state it is too difficult to round up our best 8 to 10 kids from each class and get them coached up and to these tournaments. Because of that they are lacking the exposure. As I have mentioned, it is no coincidence that players with the resources to get on an AAU team have been able to get offers from high major teams. The in-state kids that get that exposure seem to have a high success rate of getting those offers. It doesn't seem unreasonable to think that if we were able to get all of our best kids that exposure we would have a bigger number of scholarship recipients.

Talent + exposure = offers. The exposure is gone and with it the offers, but that is not to say the talent is gone too.