On April 4, Villanova University and the University of North Carolina played in one of the greatest college basketball games of all time. After exchanging runs and leads for 40 minutes, Marcus Paige hit a seemingly impossible game-tying three-pointer with only a few ticks left on the clock. But Paige’s grandeur was all for not. That’s because Villanova’s Kris Jenkins hit a buzzer-beater to win the national championship.
Fourteen former Top 100 recruits — seven on each side — saw the floor in that game. Jenkins was the 73rd ranked recruit in the nation in 2013. Ryan Arcidiacono, the player who assisted Jenkins, was ranked 46th in 2012. Paige was ranked 22nd in 2012.
In a roundabout way, recruiting top players is vital for consistent success in college basketball. Denver basketball will never be North Carolina or Villanova, but they can certainly strive to maximize their talent via recruiting. The Pios won’t have to divert resources or scholarships, per se, not if they focus their recruiting on local prospects. That strategy is more enticing right now than it’s ever been before.
To put it bluntly, it’s difficult to recruit college players to schools like DU. It’s a small school in the Summit League (not exactly the ACC in terms of history) with highly selective academic standards (which eliminates prospects with so-so grades). To make matters worse, the Colorado Buffaloes scour the state in search of the best prospects and often come away with them. CU’s Tad Boyle has turned the Buffs into a consistent Pac-12 power and he’s done so by relying on Coloradan recruits.
As you probably deduced from the headline, there’s reason to be optimistic about DU’s chances of moving up. Newly hired head basketball coach Rodney Billups comes from Boulder, where he built himself a reputation for recruiting and player development. He knows how to recruit the best of the best, especially in the state of Colorado. He’s a major reason CU landed Colorado’s top recruits year after year. In order to carry over his success to Denver, he will need the same recruiting success.
Of course, this all underlines the progress of high school basketball in Colorado. Before Billups’ older brother Chauncey became a basketball icon, Colorado was the antithesis of a basketball pipeline. Teams simply didn’t recruit the state because there weren’t elite prospects.
In recent years, Colorado high schools have pumped out top flight college basketball players like never before. Basketball powerhouses like Indiana and Gonzaga are dipping into the state for starter-caliber recruits. The Buffaloes were only able to reach the Big Dance with four Coloradans in their starting lineup because there were actually four Coloradans capable of playing heavy minutes in March. That last bit seems facetious, but I assure you otherwise.
Recruiting doesn’t exactly make or break a program, but if DU wants to join South Dakota State and Stephen F. Austin (just to name a few) among the mid-major powers, they will have to take advantage of Colorado’s progress as a basketball recruiting hub.
Billups knows that he will face stiff competition from top-flight programs—including from his mentor at CU—but if he can pick off a mid-tier or even top-tier prospect from the hooves of the Buffaloes, it will go a long way in showing that DU basketball has the potential to be great.
