College basketball insider Adam Zagoria says some programs have given up on recruiting high school players entirely, a shift he discussed on the most recent episode of The Sportsnaut Interview podcast.
Zagoria told host Evan Groat that Kansas State is one of those programs.
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“I think Kansas State, which has had some real problems this year, they don’t even recruit high school players anymore,” Zagoria said. “Rick Pitino at St. John’s has a freshman on his roster, but he’s said at various times he’s not really gonna recruit high school players anymore.”
The reason is pretty straightforward. Coaches can go find somebody older, bigger and more ready to contribute right now.
“If you’re a coach and you can get a grown man who’s 23 years old out of the portal, or a European, former European pro, they’re gonna be physically more experienced and physically stronger than a high school kid,” Zagoria said. “There’s a lot of worlds overlapping.”
Indiana and College Football Set New Model for Basketball Rosters
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College football has already proven the model works. Indiana won a national championship this past season with a roster built largely on experienced transfers and older players. The Hoosiers weren’t assembled through traditional high school recruiting classes. They were pieced together with guys who were ready to compete at the highest level immediately. Basketball coaches have clearly been paying attention.
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Zagoria said the best formula over the last decade has been a combination of portal veterans and a few standout freshmen. Duke pulled it off last season.
“Duke obviously appeared to have that perfect mix,” he said. “They had Cooper Flagg, they had Kon Knueppel, and they had some older players. They looked like they were gonna win the whole thing. They got to the Final Four, blew a late lead to Houston.”
UConn is running a version of that this year with Braylon Mullins. But Zagoria made clear that most programs can’t recruit at that level.
“Not every school can afford or is recruiting five-star guys like Cooper Flagg and Braylon Mullins,” he said.
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So they go another route. Zagoria brought up UCLA coach Mick Cronin, who recently joked about the kind of player he’s looking for now.
“You had Mick Cronin, the UCLA coach, joking yesterday that he wants to get somebody who drinks vodka and wrestles bears from Lithuania on his team,” Zagoria said. “Only some schools I think are really going in on high school players anymore, and that’s hurt high school recruiting.”
The conversation turned to something even stranger — former professional players trying to get college eligibility. Zagoria said he’s old school on the issue.
“If you made the decision to leave college and you’re gonna go pro and forfeit your eligibility, you shouldn’t get a do-over and be able to come back to college,” he said.
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The NCAA’s current rules allow a player to return if he’s within five years of his high school graduating class and hasn’t signed an NBA contract or appeared in NBA games. But Zagoria pointed to a contradiction that makes the whole thing murky.
“There are all kinds of European pros who have signed with schools at the semester break, coming to U.S. colleges,” he said. “So really, what’s the difference between a European pro and an American pro? I understand the arguments, but it is such a sea change from the college game we all grew up with that it’s hard for a lot of people to process.”
He talked to people on both sides. Jay Bilas is fine with it. Tom Izzo is decidedly not.
“I couldn’t get Tom Izzo off the phone one day for 25 minutes because he just said it’s the end of the world,” Zagoria said. “And he’s gonna go back out and try to get Miles Bridges and Magic Johnson back playing for Michigan State.”
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What makes this season so interesting is that the freshman class runs counter to the overall trend. Zagoria said as many as eight of the top picks in the NBA draft will be freshmen, with Darryn Peterson at Kansas, Cameron Boozer at Duke, and AJ Dybantsa at BYU leading the way.
That a freshman class this talented exists at the exact moment programs are abandoning high school recruiting says a lot about where college basketball is right now.
Zagoria also broke down conference races and mid-major contenders on the podcast. The full interview is available on The Sportsnaut Interview.
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