Recruiting Forces Are Influencing Basketball Prospects Earlier Than Ever
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Eagles suspend Terrell Owens indefinitely. Page 3C C SUNDAY SPORTS Novembe r 6,2005 COLLEGE FOOTBALL 2C-4C • MOTOR SPORTS 10C • GOLF 11C www.fayettevillenc.com/spor ts Staff photo illustration by David SmitH By Dan Wiederer Staff writer As Dominique Sutton catches the ball in transition, his skills sparkle like a new bride’s smile. A crossover dribble and quick spin allow him to complete an effortless left- handed layup. He smirks, enjoying the simplicity of it all. Unlike many of the 252 players attending the Bob First of a FROM Gibbons Evaluation Clinic in Winston-Salem, Sutton plays tHree-par t carefree. He feels no urgency to impress scouts, no series. immediate need to prove he is the best player in camp. After all, Sutton’s college plans have been set for some time. Even though the 6-foot-5 forward still had yet to play a game in his junior season at The Patterson School, a prep school northwest of Charlotte, he made a verbal INSIDE commitment to play for Wake Forest the summer after his % Fame and fortune are freshman year. powerful draws tHat lure THE more and more college “I just wanted to get it done,” Sutton said. “I fell in love with Wake the first time I came to visit and just said, stars to the pros, ‘Yeah, this is the place.’ ” % The NCAA clamps down Such is the trend these days where heightening exposure on recruiting gimmicks at an early age has high-profile prospects making their tHat cater to players’ egos, college commitments earlier than ever. Page 9C According to Gibbons, a North Carolina-based scout and recruiting expert, early commitments have now become the MONDAY CRADLE norm. % Tr adi t ion- r icH Gibbons estimated that while only about 40 percent of programs in NortH Recruiting forces top prospects were committing when the NCAA added an Carolina go head to early signing period in the early 1980s, closer to 90 percent head for top talent. of the country’s elite recruits are now deciding long before are influencing the spring of their senior years. Last year, for example, 184 TUESDAY of Gibbons’ top 200 players committed during the November % For one Illinois signing period. standout, the pressure basketball prospects That’s why when the National Letter of Intent signing to choose a college is period begins Thursday, it will carry all the suspense of a botH exhilirating and Harlem Globetrotters game. mind-numbing. earlier than ever See CRADLE, Page 8C COMING NOV. 13 A 28-page special section previewing the season N.C. STATE 2 0, NO. 9 FLORIDA STATE 15 Playoff pairings Pack shocks Noles keep teams East SATURDAY ’ S By BrentKallestad By Earl Vaughan Jr. The Associated Press ACC SCORES Scholastic sports editor % N. Carolina 16, TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — North Carolina State seems Fears turned to pleasant surprise for some Cape No. 19 Boston College right at home in Seminole country. Fear region coaches Saturday as the N.C. High Freshman AndreBrown ranfor 179yards and a School AthleticAssociation announced its state 14 touchdown and the Wolfpack intercepted three passes in football playoff pairings. % No. 5 Miami 27, a 20-15 upset of No. 9 Florida State on Saturday — the second time in fiveyears N.C. Statehas won in Tal- Twenty-four Cape Fear region teams advanced No. 3 Va. TecH 7 lahassee. to the playoffs, including eight Cumberland County % Georgia TecH 30, N.C. State’s Chuck Amato, who spent 18 seasons as schools. Wake Forest 17 an assistant to Florida State coach Bobby Bowden, is the A couple of Fayetteville schools, Jack Britt and only Atlantic Coast Conference coach to beat the Semi- Seventy-First, expected to be sent to the 4-AA West- % Clemson 49, noles on their home field. ern playoffs. Both found themselves in the Eastern Duke 20 Amatojoked he wouldn’tneed aplane ride toget AP photo bracket. Britt, the No. 9 seed in the East, goes to Wilm- % Virginia 51, back to Raleigh, N.C. N.C. State’s Andre Brown, right, runs past Florida State’s Temple 3 See WOLFPACK, next page Kyler Hall during the fourtH quarter of Saturday’s upset. See PLAYOFFS, Page 7C 8C SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2005 THE CHANGING FACE THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER OF RECRUITING Carolina coach Roy Williams. “You say that now to a kid and he looks at you and says, C r adle: Stars attract early attention ‘My AAU team’s been to Hawaii four times.’ ” From Page 1C Coaches are also finding, particularly at the elite level, Barring any last-minute that kids have become more surprises, North Carolina will egotistical, far more sign the nation’s No. 1 class, a impressed with their own coup that includes national top abilities than the scholarship 10 gems Tywon Lawson and offers being dangled in front Wayne Ellington. Duke will of them. counter with a blue-chip crop “In a lot of cases, personal headlined by small forward humility has been replaced, Gerald Henderson, center unfortunately, by a lot of Brian Zoubek and shooting personal pride bordering on guard Jon Scheyer. arrogance,” said N.C. State All five of those players assistant Mark Phelps. “When committed within weeks of you’re told how wonderful you each other in May, just after are at a young age and not their junior seasons finished. necessarily encouraged to In many cases, those decisions improve, it’s really hard to were accompanied by sighs of maintain a level head and say, relief. ‘I’ve got to keep working.’ ” “These kids are playing in While the early exposure has all these tournaments and made kids more ready for the AAU events all across the intensity of competition and the country at such a young age travel of college basketball, that I think they’re almost many people wonder whether tired of the recruiting process the exposure is too much too by the time they become soon. juniors,” said Dave Weber, Coaches say they feel Scheyer’s coach at Glenbrook entangled in a recruiting North High School near process that’s become far Chicago. “I honestly could not more complex. Prospects are have seen going through a growing more sophisticated whole summer and another about recruiting, too, having fall with Jon and trying to do been courted to play for elite this. There’s no way. I had traveling teams as early as nothing left in the tank.” middle school, wooed with shoes and equipment and all- Early to rise expenses paid trips across the Today’s rush to country. commitment has heaped added “By the time we get to responsibility on college them, we’re talking about coaches, who find themselves ‘Hey, read our letters about under increasing pressure to our university,’” Robinson identify difference-makers and said. “And they’ve been used secure them as early as to somebody sending them possible. Gone are the days packages of gear in the mail. when recruiting heated up as How do you balance that?” a prospect entered his senior That taste of the big time year. Nowadays, kids are has begun to sculpt — and in seemingly registering on the some ways warp — their radar soon after they leave priorities. For many players, the delivery room. college basketball is no longer “It used to be that you looked at as the ultimate started recruiting a kid as an spotlight but rather a 11th-grader and you might springboard to a more send somebody to see him as luxurious stage. a 10th-grader,” said Steve “There’s a lure of ‘Hey, if I Robinson, an assistant coach can make $2 million, $3 at North Carolina. “But now million a year, then I can be I’ve been to see a kid play his on “MTV Cribs” with my MTV first game on varsity as a cars,’ ” Robinson said. “What ninth-grader. I had to go. But happened to the days of a when I’m there, it’s like, young man dreaming about ‘What am I doing?’ ” winning a national In essence, the seed for championship and walking these developments was across the stage with a planted in the early 1980s diploma in his hand? A lot of when recruiting reforms these kids are looking so far intended to reduce recruiting ahead that they fail to realize budgets and curtail the there are some nice steps unlimited access coaches had along the way.” to players spawned a revolution in summer Lack of commitment basketball. With coaches Williams fears that the forced to adhere to stricter changes have kids making guidelines and recruit within decisions before they have an NCAA-structured calendar, enough of the right new stages emerged — information. primarily during the summer “Nowadays, I’ll call a kid — for high school players to on the first contact day and showcase their skills. say, ‘This is the first day I can All-star camps and elite call you,’ and they’ll say ‘Well, AAU tournaments became I’ve already made a more prominent. More commitment,’ ” Williams said. recently, summer coaches and “That makes things difficult, to traveling team powers began Staff photo by Stephanie Bruce say the least.” to supplant the high school Dominique Sutton, shown playing in the Bob Gibbons 2005 Evaluation Clinic at Wake Forest, made an oral The North Carolina coach coach as the primary admits he has lost out on intermediary between college commitment to play for the Deacons after his freshman year of high school. ‘I just wanted to get it done,’ he says of players who were ready to programs and recruits.