Until the last 4 years Miami’s basketball recruits were not highly ranked by the ranking services. Miami appeared to rely on getting the young man that was overlooked or the family didn’t know the system and money required to have tape looked at and promoted.
Dare we say Coach Steele and his staff have brought us out of the dark and into the Midwest sunlight? The staff is relentless in identifying talent; developing true, meaningful relationships; making their physical presence known at games, camps and tournies; and make no apologies for talking to the same players as ‘the big guys’.
There are not many top priority recruits and a handful at most of commits each class. Accordingly, we should proudly start a named page and add at minimum the commits.
When reading about Jalen Gunther and the other 2 commits you quickly see we are passed the work in progress. The articles and videos point to players that have not peaked but continue to make huge strides in their game which is something Coach Steele always brings up. The staff wants players who have the killer instinct, winner attitude, brains with basketball IQ, skill, and are fantastic humans, but also they must have high potential.
Jaylen Gunther was first team all state but also second leading scorer. He will break both the school season records for points AND assists. So 6 months ago his coach described Jaylen’s approach as slow but can play fast when he needs to. That is a rare ability in high school as a scorer. We used to recruit and see guys that were allergic to assists.
Are they better recruiters and evaluators…yes. The landscape is also in a place where, due to the portal, high majors are prioritizing the portal, bringing in experienced D1 players over riskier high school recruits. Also with the portal, having relationships is a long term play, you may not land a player the first time, but there will be 2/3/4 more opportunities.
I agree better quality HS players, but you can’t discount the fact that the landscape has changed and teams are now filling their rosters more with proven college players from the portal, than HS players they have to develop. Which does allow better HS players previously perhaps not in our reach to be reachable. I think Miami is doing a good job of continuing to mine the HS talent while filling in gaps with good transfer players.
Recruiting rankings aside, (which I do take seriously) I pretty much have complete trust in Steele’s high school evaluation and development. We have three recruiting classes worth of evidence to support this. Basically, no total busts (give or take a Jackson Kotecki). If you throw out the first freshmen class which was either inherited from Owens or put together on the fly since then every guy has at least been a rotation player if not a starter. Cooper (starter), Elmer, (starter, all conference), Ipsaro (starter, would’ve been all conference), Reece Potter (rotation player, starter caliber), Byers (starter, all conference), Skaljack (starter, all conference), Kirby (rotation player), Perry (rotation player), Robbins, Waltz and Stowers (jury is still out).
However you slice it, that’s a tremendous batting average.
I think there’s a lot to be said for going 31-0 getting national media 2x/week for months and (presumably) getting a way bigger NIL budget. Which is just awesome. This is exciting and I’m thrilled we have something like this to cheer for.
