alright, thats fair. No one here has the answers.
Let's discuss then
My opinion is the staff should shift their focus out of the southeast, where its hard to get kids to come all the way to ames and isu has had little historical success and shift that focus into midwest states where kids are more familiar with ISU and where every ISU coaches have had successful players come from.
I follow, and agree with, the logic of "i dont care where they come from, just land good players" but is it fair to say that isu is NOT landing good players from the Southeast? Is it fair to question why they continue to recruit that area (9 of 13 offers in 2021 class)
It makes total sense though. That is where the majority of our staff has connections with AAU clubs. It seems like the Chicago thing was more lightning in a bottle than what should be expected going forward. I don’t think it’s a great idea to constantly be fighting headwinds in recruiting. They locked up Foster for 2020 which is another outlier for this staff so they seem to be able to pull off some magic while keeping their focus on their “home” region.
I think the staff needs a shakeup and that would be one way to bring about a shift in the recruiting strategy (bringing in a “midwest” guy). But that brings its own problems because the number of kids isn’t that big outside of Illinois and Minnesota and even Illinois has been slim pickings lately. IA, NE, MO, Dakotas, WI just don’t produce that many numbers. The kids that these states do produce is a feeding frenzy for every school in the Big Ten.
So you can go to FL, GA, TN and compete against the schools down there where BBall isn’t that hot for kids, or you can kick around the Midwest going against MI, MSU, IN, MN, WI, KU, IL (when they’re going), basically all of those schools could be considered “Basketball schools” (even though I agree FB is still king at a few of them).
