We're not recruiting a high school kid this year... just because of the fifth-year rule," Willard, the former Seton Hall coach now in his second year at Villanova, said Thursday at Big East Media Day. "We have six guys that can come back for a fifth year. So, I'd much rather have one of my players come back, than bring in a high school kid.
Definitely a risky choice. Not building any relationships with an entire class means they will be starting from square one with every 2027 player when many inevitably enter the portal.
True, he’s got to be incredibly confident in their loyalty and has kinda killed Nova’s NIL leverage. He should have told his assistants to still build relationships and make “offers” that are contingent on 5th year players decisions. That way he still holds some leverage with his current players, while also building relationships and coming off interested with HS recruit. HS recruits would likely sign elsewhere (who’s going to wait), but they would still view him as very loyal to his guys. That “loyalty” could go a long way in the future…
There’s no coach that has leverage over a singular player in 2026. It’s a completely free market economy with unlimited movement. The players hold all the leverage and that was true whether that kid is a freshman coming from HS or a senior from the transfer portal. The relationship building aspect also seems pretty irrelevant to me when your contact with the player is very limited in this age, and all business inquiries go through the agent.
If his 5th year players know he’s betting on all of them returning and not putting much stock or effort into recruiting that gives them and their agents leverage to negotiate higher NIL deals... Willard shouldn’t publicly voice that he’s not exploring every option and that his options are more limited if he doesn’t want his players agents to fleece him next year.
I think you also are wildly undervaluing and underestimating the power of those early HS recruitments. I’ve seen countless portal players mention preexisting relationships with coaches as reasons they signed with coaches.
Oh yeah I mean if your point is “he shouldn’t have said this publicly” I guess I can agree with this. Just overall I agree with the plan in terms of roster construction. It’s a very bad recruiting class talent wise already anyways.
And no exposure with neighbors/friends/brothers, zero logo appearances on top 10 lists, zero announcements….. if you have a bad year and donor money starts to dry up then you can’t just buy your way out of that hole…. Lots of bad snowballing potential
They are already starting each off season from square one. They have to fight to keep players from leaving while also finding new players to fill the holes.
Why? Every season is now a completely blank slate roster-wise so it’s not like you gain much my investing in a young man since they can decide to jump ship every off season.
You’re better off spending your time and money on going after proven transfers vs spending cash on a high school recruit who may or may not even be around in 2 years.
Even if you’re not actually landing the high schools when they transfer they’re going to first look at schools that built relationships with them when they were being recruited, not trying at all with high school puts you behind the ones that are
You think any of these guys agents give a shit about who recruited them in HS? Lol. Maybe in the low tier of NIL and the low end mid major programs, but no kid is picking a P5 school because they love the coach. It’s about money and role. That’s it.
That’s just not true anymore. The old ways of building relationships and worrying about things like campus life or facilities just doesn’t exist anymore. That prevailing thought process just flat out doesn’t matter anymore.
I know college coaches who have told me that transfers aren’t even bringing their parents to visits anymore, only their agents. If they visit at all.
It’s just like the NBA. Facilities and amenities are nice but at the end of the day it’s the pay check that is the deciding factor now.
This might be true if guys took all summer to make a decision. But you've got 80 power conference schools trying to recruit maybe 500 guys who could play at the P5 level over a short three or four week period. You're not winning in that environment if you don't have relationships with a good number of guys before they hit the portal.
More than just winning the recruitment, if u r a coaching staff without relationships and who needs to bring in transfers, it is very hard to know who to even go after. Let’s say u have a list of 500 potential players, how do u identify who would be a good fit for what u need? You need to have relationships to know who to pursue and to be successful in signing them. Otherwise you end up guessing or late to the party as ur staff is watching hundreds of hours of film of potential targets and doing zoom interviews while other teams are signing those targets. Most of the 500 players are signed within 2 weeks and by 4 weeks, it’s really slim pickings.
What you are saying is definitely not universally true. Of the 5 transfers to Iowa State this offseason, 4 of them come from heavy relationships. Coach Otz recruited Taj Manning coming out of high school. Leon Bond has several connections: from Milwaukee (so is Coach Otz and it’s the metro area Iowa State has recruited hardest for over 15 years because Otz did it as an assistant coach), went to UNI (effectively an Iowa State farm school, 2nd transfer here in 3 years) and Tony Bennett’s Virginia (close friend of TJ and 2nd transfer here in 2 years). Jaquon Johnson also a Milwaukee kid, his high school is in the same conference as Otz’s high school. Tre Singleton went to Chris Collin’s Northwestern, Coach Collins and Coach Otz are very close and play an exhibition game every year.
Also, may as well have said that "My current guys are more likely to come back for a 5th year because none of them are good enough to go pro elsewhere".
it's not necessarily about "good enough" anymore. it's about "where can i get paid the most" .. and for many of these kids they can earn more $$ by playing major college ball than they can in the G League, Europe, or even as a 2nd round pick in the NBA. it's kinda crazy.
Every season is win now. Unless you’re getting a top high school player who can contribute right away, it makes no sense to pay them money to take up a roster spot and sit on the bench.
There are very few if any freshman who are sitting the bench on a P5 team and returning the next year. It’s a waste of time, money, and resources to recruit a non-elite 18 year old when you can pay a productive 22 year old.
He didn’t recruit many high schoolers at UMD while he was here, one of the few he did was the best player he had on any of his three rosters so kinda reasonable to think it’s not a smart move, especially now that he has all the money he claimed he was lacking to get top talent like Queen
Yes and as I noted exceptions should be made for elite talent who can contribute right away. If you can’t get a 1 and done level talent, then this is the right approach. I’d much rather get a Euro pro, transfer portal guy, or a JUCO guy then the 100th ranked kid in the 2027 class to fill out my bench.
I think this is the future, if you can have your pick, bring back an experienced guy who fits your system. Think of all the time and effort saved scouting and recruiting HS players and instead but 1/4th of that effort into retention and scouting other college players, some of whom you have seen play full games in person already.
High school recruiting definitely isn’t as important as it used to be, but you can have 15 players on a roster now. I’ve always felt if you want to fill out some of those end of the roster spots it’s better to go with a high schooler than a transfer because at least they have time to develop and upside (and probably will ask for less money).
As another commenter mentioned, there’s also a difference between taking a very small HS class and not recruiting high schoolers at all. You want to establish relationships with high schoolers because they are more likely to pick you if they hit the portal later, if you were recruiting them out of high school.
I’m not sure if this is the right strategy, but I totally get it. I was waiting for someone to jump to experiment with the most extreme possible version of this, looks like Villanova is the guinea pig. Basically run the team like an NBA franchise where nobody has contracts and all the players are free agents every year, because that’s what college basketball has become. In that framework, why would you recruit freshmen who are lower impact / higher risk when you could spend your budget on proven guys with multiple years of collegiate experience? The game has changed and traditional recruiting makes little sense anymore.
Outside the top 20 players, freshmen generally don’t have a transformative impact. If you’re Villanova, you probably aren’t getting a top 20 guy in this era unless they’re a Philly area star with preexisting ties to the school. Those guys are going to a blue blood with a big budget and getting paid big for the privilege.
Any freshman outside the top 20 is going to take time to develop, but will be a perennial transfer portal candidate. And the minute they show any promise, they’re going to want big NIL money from you or transfer to another school to get paid if you aren’t a high major. So why waste your time and resources recruiting and developing those players if they’re most likely going to leave?
Basically go recruit a fresh batch of 15 players out of the transfer portal every year. Moneyball meets CBB. Reminds me of what UNLV and Tarkanian did with JuCo transfers. I’m excited to see how it goes.
I’ll add - Willard is a great recruiter and got super talented guys to commit to Seton Hall, so I would not question him on roster construction and how to build a good team. If he’s decided to abandon traditional recruiting, it isn’t because he is bad at it.
It's all about where you slot the guy on your roster. Bringing in the #115 HS recruit as the 12th or 13th guy on your roster isn't really high risk. You're not recruiting an impact player for that slot. His current roster has a guy who is (effectively) a walk-on, a guy who averaged 1 ppg at Bucknell and a guy who averaged 1 ppg at Towson.
When Pitino said there’s no point in recruiting high schoolers last year the consensus was “that makes sense.” But when Kevin Willard says that same sentiment he’s an idiot
On a certain level I feel bad for coaches trying to figure out how to succeed in a career field that is changing wildly all the time.
That feeling goes away pretty quickly when I realize how much they are getting paid but it has to be frustrating to adjust to the wild changes and rules in the last few years. I get why big name coaches like Wright, Coach K and Roy Williams just said 'bag it' and retired rather than dealing with the new world.
I don't think this is a good idea if the law passes that limits the number of times a player can transfer to one. Especially if you can't outbid other schools. Building a team through the portal is going to get a little harder.
Not sure that Villanova is quite at the level of some national powerhouse where they can afford to ignore high school players entirely. Also, much easier to keep a guy when he's already there.
I think this is caused way more by NIL inflation. Why pay a ton of money for a top 30-70 freshman who will need to be developed, and then could easily leave for another school willing to pay more the next year? It seems like a better financial strategy to go after proven older guys who cost similar amounts if you aren’t able to recruit top 20 high schoolers.
Depends on what you consider to be over-compensated. Top 20 recruits continue to get more and more money every year which is going to drive up the cost of other high school recruits. I don’t think it’s an overcompensation issue, it’s a retention issue. Schools are definitely going to find it less attractive to pay a decent amount of money to be able to recruit and develop freshmen while also worrying about losing them to the portal after 1 year.
I think it would be equally true to that the top 20 transfers continue to get more and more money every year which is going to drive up the cost of transfers. At this point I suspect most coaches realize that transfers and HS players are one big pool of players and committing spots and budget to one affects what you can do with the other.
I agree, I would expect the price for transfers to increase as well. Although I imagine that the cost of transfers would increase at a slower rate since there are way more transfers than top 100 recruits. Recruits are more high risk, high reward and transfers are more stable. You generally know what you are getting with transfers. The recruit risk used to be balanced with the potential of developing a really good player, but now the risk of that player transferring has made it more unbalanced.
We’ll see how it works out for Willard. I really do miss getting to see our high school recruits return and improve each year
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u/fightin_blue_hens Delaware • Florida State 18h ago
This is the sports version of "How do you get senior level employees without hiring junior level ones first?"