Arizona basketball recruiting events in June could become a thing of the past

Arizona basketball may need to adjust if Arizona joins in with New York and Texas banning June recruiting events.

College Basketball recruiting and options for athletes are changing by the day. After the Condoleezza Rice NCAA Commission handed down new rules for college basketball, the shoe companies, AAU teams and coaches, and the NBA have had to stay nimble. The rules and landscape are changing every day for Arizona basketball and all NCAA CBB programs.

Let’s take the case of Darius Bazley, a former Syracuse recruit who had options coming out of high school. He was ranked No. 18 by Rivals among national recruits for the 2018 class. Bazel originally was headed to play at Syracuse but decided he would play in the NBA G-League.

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The NBA G-League announced they would pay high school graduates $125,000 to play in their league if players didn’t want to play in college. Taking this road is a huge risk because if you don’t perform,  your NBA career would be essentially over. Enter a shoe company not known for basketball shoes. Bazley ended up signing a $1M internship with New Balance through his agent Rich Paul. Paul is  LeBron James, John Wall and Ben Simmons agent. The contract includes performance incentives that could earn Bazley up to $14 M.

All this comes on the heels of news that the NBA is going to get rid of the one-and-done rule and make 18-year-olds eligible to play in the NBA. This rule is projected to change by 2020 at the earliest and could be by 2021. Not knowing is muddying the waters for players in those classes. The Pac-12 went on record calling for and agreeing this would be a favorable move.

NCAA changes coming up include allowing non-drafted players to go back to school with a bunch of conditions including going back to the same school, being evaluated by the NBA and being eligible to continue school. But it’s not yet clear if this is any player who enters the draft or certain players who enter the draft.

Read more in our earlier post on the subject:

Pac-12 first Conference to call for end to One-and-Done rule

Changes could be coming as the Pac-12 Task force just submitted their recommendation to the NCAA Commission to finally end the one-and-done rule.

So the G-League wants to play high school grads $125K, which is more than any WNBA player or G-League regular player makes. The Shoe Companies will compete with the G-League to give sponsorships worth much more and take a gamble on a player. the NCAA will allow players to return to school if not drafted or not ready, but what about recruiting?

Recruiting is getting harder to do for NCAA Coaches. The NCAA commission wants to cut the AAU and shoe companies out of the mix due to the recent FBI Investigation indictments, convictions and plea deals including Arizona’s Book Richardson. The NCAA is allowing recruiting trips to tournaments in June, but there is a caveat, only for public schools it seems.

This prompted both New York and Texas to opt out of June recruiting events altogether because the states feel it is not fair to all of their high school students to exclude students in private schools, etc.

According to Adam Zagoria of Zags Blog, here is the reason why New York made the decision:

"The NFHS [National Federation of High Schools] members only policy, prohibits participation of high school players from any high school in New York City. Not allowing players from the Catholic, Private and Public Schools in New York City (over 300 schools) to participate is unjust and wrong.In an age when Education is trying to be more inclusive, this NFHS action is being more exclusive."

New York was first to cancel June recruiting events due to discrimination, but this morning Zagoria announced Texas was following suit citing Rick Sherley and explained the reasoning for the Executive Director of the Texas Association of Basketball Coaches (TABC) decision:

"Sherley said the private schools account for “probably 20 percent of the Division 1 prospects from our state.”“The UIL assigned it to us because is has to be run by a coaches’ association. No. 1, we can’t invite anyone that’s not in the UIL and that knocks out all those private schools. And how am I going to get them to join next year when they say, ‘You didn’t even invite us to the most important thing you have?’ And it’s not us, it’s them [the NFHS].”"

The Rice Commission recommendations, which purpose is to clean up recruiting in college basketball, assigned events to the NFHS. According to Zagoria, the NFHS, “Has no prior experience running large-scale recruiting events, is now in charge of sanctioning and sponsoring June events.”

New York, then Texas days later, is Arizona next? If so, it may be even harder for Sean Miller and his coaching staff, now not allowed to go to Las Vegas for those tournaments, to see talent, even local talent.