The Recruiting Period has started for NCAA Men’s Basketball, which means coaches are able to have in-home visits and school visits for potential recruits. Recruiting can be a complicated time for coaches, players, and those that follow recruiting. While we here at Lobo Lane won’t focus on recruiting until a player is actually signed, we do still have some general thoughts about the process. So here are few things we (sometimes unsuccessfully) keep in mind while following basketball recruiting.

These are Teenagers: First and foremost, we have to be reminded that these recruits are in High School, which means that we have to remember that most High School students will often change their minds several times. High School students are still in the process of figuring out who are and what is important to them. On top of that, they still have High School itself to deal with. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to study for an exam, while fielding texts from dozens of coaches, while trying to get ready for their next game, while maintaining friendships and relationships, while… you get the point. I’d probably be fickle too.

Things Change Quickly: Most of us don’t have the list of who the coaches are recruiting and the priority of the recruits for the coaches. Recruiting is very fluid; you can be in the lead for a recruit and then not be on their list the next day, or vice versa. If you are not informed of where a recruit stands and the interest level from both the recruit and the coaches, you are likely informed with old news. It seems pretty common for a player to commit to the Lobos who wasn’t even listed as a potential recruit on many of the national recruiting websites. I think that we’re lucky to have a resource like Mark, from the Lobo Lair, who keeps us Lobo Fans more informed than most. However, unless he wants to upset all of his contacts, he can’t keep us informed with the constant comings and goings of the program. We’ll still have to be largely in the dark.

Not Everyone is Coming Here: During the recruiting period, Coach Neal and his staff will be recruiting and evaluating many players. Yes, they are recruiting the players that they are visiting but only a small portion of them are going to come to New Mexico. The scholarship numbers don’t allow it, we also don’t know how actively the coaches are recruiting a certain player, and the player might just not want to come here. In fact, just because a coach is visiting a recruit doesn’t mean they are even going to offer the recruit. Perhaps the best insight we get from these visits, however, is the type of players that they are looking at. Odds are, we’ll end up with a guy who is like, if not one of, the guys we’ve heard about. He just might not be the guy whose mixtape you’ve watched a hundred times.

Don’t Get Too Invested: It is really easy to get too invested emotionally in a player’s recruitment, to the point that you might get mad at a recruit when they decide that they won’t be coming to New Mexico. One thing to keep in mind is that as our recruiting improves, the more often we’ll get rejected by players that we, as fans, really want to see in cherry and silver. That said, the more often we’re in the running for some of the top players, the more likely it is that we’ll land a few. It can definitely be frustrating, but it can also be kind of fun to even be in that situation with those players. That said, our coaches are the people that are, and should be, truly invested in the recruits. And they certainly know that every athlete that they recruit is not coming to our University.

Trust the Coaches: Our coaches have a plan into what recruits they want and they invest their time, money, and emotions into recruiting. Even knowing that, it’s pretty easy for us to try to do their job for them (“We should recruit this five-star guy who’s from Chicago, which is almost Indiana, and that’s where Noodles is from. We should have a connection there!”) It’s pretty unlikely that I find out about a player before the coaches do, so if we aren’t recruiting a guy, it’s probably for a reason. They also have a plan for the next several seasons, so by looking at the players they are recruiting, we can get an idea of what that plan is. But again, they know that plan better than I do.

Don’t be a Judge of Ratings: Recruit ratings are not the end-all and be-all of College Basketball, even though some people might want us to think that. Beyond the ratings of the very top tier of players of each class, there rarely seems to be much of a consensus. On top of that, a lot of guys see their ratings jump simply because of who is recruiting them, which is sort of strange in itself. There are a lot of diamonds in the rough to be found, for sure. For New Mexico, the 2010 recruiting class is a perfect example of this, as the two lowest rated players in the class ended up being the two players drafted by NBA teams (well, an NBA team. Go LoBulls!). Cam Bairstow and Tony Snell are proof that recruit ratings are in no way precise. They might give us a bit of insight to a player’s ability, but again, the coaches have watched the players they bring in a lot more than the people who are determining those ratings.

Excitement When A Recruit Signs: When the ink on the dotted line is dry, the player is officially committed to the University of New Mexico and they become part of the Lobo Family. It’s pretty rare for a player who signs a Letter of Intent to not end up at the university they signed with, so that’s a great time to get rid of any trepidation we have and really get excited about the player. And we should be excited for a recruit when they sign with us. We’ll be watching them grow as players for several years, getting to know them in the process. To me, one of the best things about being a college basketball fan is feeling that you actually get to know the players and sort of get to watch them grow up. And talking to other Lobo fans, I don’t think I’m alone in that.

Following recruiting can be fun and frustrating at the same time. Part of that is that we really don’t have much to do with the actual outcome of the recruitment. Showing up to games, living up to the label of being one of the best crowds in college basketball, and showing our support to our coaches and players is just about the best we can do. That’s not to say that none of that is important. Players want to play at universities where the fans care. It’s just that if we are going to invest our emotions in the program, we feel that it’s probably better to focus more of them on the guys who are already on the team.