NCSA College Athletic Scholarships Blog

It isn’t often that you can find a story about top recruits that shun the big name programs because they find the right fit at a smaller university.  I constantly encourage recruits to consider all of their options, but in practice most athletes end up going for the glitz of a big-time program.  However, signing day provided several examples of athletes opting for the road less traveled.  USA Today examined a few of these scenarios:

During his basketball recruitment, Zeke Marshall received countless letters from major basketball programs. He says the letters mostly talked up teams’ gaudy numbers, as in won-loss records, championships and frequency of televised games.

“That’s all they would send,” Marshall, a 6-11 senior center at McKeesport (Pa.) High School, said Wednesday. “It would get annoying. I wanted to know something else.”

Marshall said he signed a national letter of intent with the University of Akron on Wednesday because of its basketball team and because the school touted a major in computer information systems that he will pursue. Rated a top-40 prospect by Scout.com and Rivals.com, he bucked the trend that sees highly touted players pick power schools by signing with the Mid-American Conference school.

Two other notable defections from the power-school route: Rashanti Harris, a 6-8 post player at The Patterson School in Lenoir, N.C., and Aaric Murray, a 6-10 center at Concordeville (Pa.) High. Harris confirmed early Wednesday he was signing with Georgia State of the Colonial Athletic Association, and Murray signed with La Salle of the Atlantic-10 Conference.

Similarly, top-10 prospect DeMarcus Cousins, a 6-9 forward at Mobile (Ala.) LeFlore High, has publicly committed to Alabama at Birmingham of Conference USA, but has not yet signed.

This change may be a result of seeing other mid-major programs achieve recent success.  Davidson’s Cinderella run in the NCAA tournament led by NBA prospect Stephen Curry is still fresh in many recruits minds.  The change can also be attributed to the expansion of games on the Internet and cable networks.  Recruits understand that if they are good enough the NBA will find them. 

However, most importantly this change is a great example of maturity and athletes making informed college decisions.  At NCSA we use the phrase “You aren’t making a 4 year decision, you are making a 40 year decision!”  These athletes are proving that statement true.

Tags: atlantic 10 conference, colonial athletic association, mid american conference, national letter of intent

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Choosing the Right Fit, College Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.