However, that’s not the case.
Atlanta, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Pittsburgh, and Tampa are the major cities on the itinerary. Even smaller cities such as Augusta, Ga., Manchester, N.H., Myrtle Beach, S.C., Newark, N.J., Raleigh, N.C., and South Bend, Ind. will be visited.
All those trips will be made in a three-week period by Western Kentucky University head basketball coach Darrin Horn and his staff, Paul Sanderford, Jeff Strohm and Cypheus Bunton.
While the recruiting process begins as early as a high school player’s freshman year, the three-week recruiting period in July can be crucial to the future of a program. Coaching staffs travel across the country, from AAU tournaments to various camps, looking for an edge as players enter their final high school season. And, with none of the day-to-day duties that coaches face while school is in session, recruiting is the focal point of their responsibilities.
“July is different, because recruiting is all-encompassing, it is all you are focused on. There are no games and we cannot work with our players,” said Horn. “During the year, there are a lot more things on your plate, so your recruiting focus is about gathering information and really prioritizing who do we need to see specifically based on what our needs are for that year. In July, we are trying to look down the road for what we need. There are two different approaches because of the time of year.”
WKU’s coaches have already been in contact during the season with the players they follow on the summer circuit — they have either made an unofficial visit to campus, or been in E.A. Diddle Arena for a Hilltopper game or team camp over the summer. According to Horn, he concentrates on potential student-athletes who he considers a priority for the program, while his staff — which also follows those designated players — is scouring camps and AAU games for potential players they can follow up with in the fall.
For Horn and his staff, it is about being seen at games of prospective student-athletes, of showing a commitment to a player by watching everything he does. The difficulty in July lies in the lack of communication allowed by NCAA rules with high school players and their AAU coaches. For all their hard work and time spent in gyms across the country, Horn and his assistants have no way to mark any progress they are making with potential recruits.
“The rules have changed because we can no longer talk to AAU coaches at these summer events anymore. At some of these larger tournaments, you’re going to start at eight or nine in the morning and you will be in the gym until 11 p.m. or midnight,” he said. “At Las Vegas, for example, it’s not uncommon to be there past midnight into the next calendar day. It feels like a 24-hour process because often times, as you can see from the travel schedule, you have gotten up at four o’clock in the morning to make a 6 a.m. flight so that you can get somewhere by nine or ten and go straight to the game as soon as you land — that just makes the day that much longer.
“One of the challenges is that you don’t know if you are making any progress just by being there. You do it because you want to make sure they see your commitment to them by being at all of their games. But, because the contact is so limited, you don’t get the same feeling for where you stand like you do in a home visit or when you have them on campus.”
Here’s an example of the hectic hours put in by Horn. On the first day of the July recruiting period, Horn departed Bowling Green at 4:30 a.m. (CDT) for a 7 a.m. flight from Nashville to Atlanta. He then drove to Suwannee and spent the evening watching potential recruits. The next afternoon, Horn was back in Atlanta for a flight to South Bend, which included a stop in Detroit. On Saturday morning, his flight from South Bend to Pittsburgh departed at 6 a.m., and included a stop in Chicago. He arrived in Pittsburgh just before 9 a.m., leaving a little over 24 hours to scout players before returning to Nashville late Sunday afternoon.
“I think that the people who pay the biggest price and who make the greatest sacrifice in July are coaches’ wives and kids,” Horn commented on the travel process. “We’re not home very much, and even when we are, we are in transition preparing for another trip. It’s really a three-week process in which we, as coaches, are pretty detached. That’s the hardest part of July recruiting.”
Why do Horn and his staff put their families through tough times in the middle of the summer? Not only because of their desire to bring in players to help build on the success and tradition of basketball on the Hill, but due to the fact that they are recruiting against coaches from some of the top conferences in the nation.
“The challenge for us, with the caliber of player we recruit, is that most of our work is against schools from the ACC, SEC, Big Ten and Big 12,” he stated. “I feel like we have to outwork people. We try to make sure that we are in the gym early and stay late, that we are more visible than other coaches are. For me personally, that is how I have always tried to separate myself in recruiting — I think even more so now with the changes in the rules.”
The results of the staff’s efforts have been evident since Horn came to the Hill in the spring of 2003. On the first day of the early signing period in Horn’s initial season, he and his staff received Letters-of-Intent from juniors-to-be Courtney Lee, Ty Rogers and Mike Walker. Horn locked up Daniel Emerson during the early signing period the next year, and part of this season’s incoming freshman class includes A.J. Slaughter, the state’s Player of the Year according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Those five players are all important pieces of the puzzle as the Toppers look to improve on last season’s 23-8 finish against a non-conference schedule that was ranked the 28th-hardest nationally, and included winning the Sun Belt Conference East Division outright for the first time during Horn’s tenure.
What makes the July recruiting period so important to the WKU coaching staff is showing prospective recruits a commitment above and beyond what the competitors are displaying to make it easier to convince potential future players to visit WKU’s campus. Horn believes that once any high school player is able to spend time around the players and coaches in the program, that they will be comfortable with the decision to become a part of the program.
“The thing that has separated us in my first three years is the people in the program — the players we have been able to get to come here, our staff and the people at Western Kentucky,” he said. “If we can identify guys early enough, get really involved and get them to campus to be around our players, staff, and the people who help us run our camps, we give ourselves a much better chance of signing players. The key to recruiting for us is not a building — the people in the program and the tradition make a difference.”
Horn’s attitude toward recruiting in general, and the July period, is one of the keys to WKU’s recent success getting commitments from top-notch high school players. With ties to WKU that date back to his playing days in the early 1990s, it is evident that Horn’s passion for the school and his commitment to the program help him share his vision with potential future Hilltoppers throughout the recruiting process.
“One of the things I have tried to do as a head coach here is make sure that when it comes to recruiting, I still work like an assistant coach in terms of the hours put in and involvement in the process,” he said. “I think that is crucial when you’re competing against the schools that we are for players. It has already payed us some dividends, and that will continue because ultimately for us, prospective recruits have to feel good about the situation they are coming to — not just the facilities and campus, but the people they will be around. That’s where our staff and players have really started to help us in that area, because we have such good people.”
And if the staff’s work this month proves to be as fruitful as in its first three years, WKU will be receiving commitments in the fall from another group of players who will help Horn and his coaches continue to build the program into one that will be respected and feared on the national level.
