BleedGopher
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per the Wall Street Journal:
In the coming days, one of the best high-school basketball players in the country will announce where he will go to college. He may choose Duke, like every other teenager who is good at the sport. He also may chose Georgia or Georgia Tech, like the so many others who go somewhere close to home.
Or he may choose one of the last places anybody would expect to find a player earmarked for future NBA stardom: Harvard.
Now the Crimson have made the NCAA tournament in four of the past five seasons and can tout Jeremy Lin’s professional fame. But Lin may not be a Harvard archetype. He may actually be a historical artifact. Lin was lightly recruited and only chose Harvard in 2006 because programs like Stanford turned him down. Harvard now wants the recruits who consider the Stanfords and Dukes of the college-basketball world.
Amaker says when he was recruited by Duke, where he played from 1983-1987, coach Mike Krzyzewski sold him on the university and playing strong defense. Now he’s competing for the same recruits with the same approach. “We’re talking about Harvard and defense,” Amaker says.
The sales pitch for attracting these players isn’t the same one they hear at bigger schools with deeper basketball pockets. Nationally televised games are rare. Duke can offer chartered flights and the hallowed grounds of Cameron Indoor Stadium; Harvard has long bus trips and a basketball arena that would be small for some high schools. Ivy League schools also face tight academic restrictions for all of their teams, which makes the pool of elite prospects shallow to begin with.
Harvard’s ability to overcome these recruiting impediments begins with Amaker, a coach whose résumé has inspired school boosters to fork over cash to help keep him around. But many point to a confluence of broader changes in the Ivy League as being far more important than a single coach. The eight schools in this historic conference have dramatically expanded their need-based financial aid. At Harvard, that expanded policy is nearly a decade old, and it has made the school’s inability to offer athletic scholarships less of a mitigating factor for many recruits.
“It’s very important,” said Kylia Carter. “It’s not only one of the best schools, but also one of the more expensive ones.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-wants-to-rule-the-basketball-world-1478802223?mod=e2tws
Go Gophers!!
In the coming days, one of the best high-school basketball players in the country will announce where he will go to college. He may choose Duke, like every other teenager who is good at the sport. He also may chose Georgia or Georgia Tech, like the so many others who go somewhere close to home.
Or he may choose one of the last places anybody would expect to find a player earmarked for future NBA stardom: Harvard.
Now the Crimson have made the NCAA tournament in four of the past five seasons and can tout Jeremy Lin’s professional fame. But Lin may not be a Harvard archetype. He may actually be a historical artifact. Lin was lightly recruited and only chose Harvard in 2006 because programs like Stanford turned him down. Harvard now wants the recruits who consider the Stanfords and Dukes of the college-basketball world.
Amaker says when he was recruited by Duke, where he played from 1983-1987, coach Mike Krzyzewski sold him on the university and playing strong defense. Now he’s competing for the same recruits with the same approach. “We’re talking about Harvard and defense,” Amaker says.
The sales pitch for attracting these players isn’t the same one they hear at bigger schools with deeper basketball pockets. Nationally televised games are rare. Duke can offer chartered flights and the hallowed grounds of Cameron Indoor Stadium; Harvard has long bus trips and a basketball arena that would be small for some high schools. Ivy League schools also face tight academic restrictions for all of their teams, which makes the pool of elite prospects shallow to begin with.
Harvard’s ability to overcome these recruiting impediments begins with Amaker, a coach whose résumé has inspired school boosters to fork over cash to help keep him around. But many point to a confluence of broader changes in the Ivy League as being far more important than a single coach. The eight schools in this historic conference have dramatically expanded their need-based financial aid. At Harvard, that expanded policy is nearly a decade old, and it has made the school’s inability to offer athletic scholarships less of a mitigating factor for many recruits.
“It’s very important,” said Kylia Carter. “It’s not only one of the best schools, but also one of the more expensive ones.”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-wants-to-rule-the-basketball-world-1478802223?mod=e2tws
Go Gophers!!