THE STUDENT VOICE SINCE 1904
SPORTS
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A look at if students are leaving KU because of campus carry p. 2
Daniel Wise, Dorance Armstrong Jr. weigh in on importance of Saturday’s Sunflower Showdown The University Daily Kansan
vol. 135 // iss. 19 Thurs., Oct. 26, 2017
Thai-style rolled ice cream shop comes to Lawrence p. 5
SEE SHOWDOWN • PAGE 10
Q&A: How KU finds its basketball stars mer league guys, it’s what they’ve been doing their whole life. Some changes may hurt them.
AUSTIN GARCIA @austin_tg15
Kansas basketball assistant coach Kurtis Townsend believes the recruitment process could change in light of the major Adidas corruption case that implicated Louisville and other schools. Townsend has been named a top 25 recruiter in the nation year after year, most recently in an article published by ESPN’s Jeff Borzello. Townsend has been around basketball and recruitment for decades and formerly played at Western Kentucky and in the CBA for the Montana Golden Nuggets. He has also held assistant coaching jobs with the University of Southern California, Michigan, California, Eastern Kentucky and Miami. Townsend explains what the recruitment process looks like, how it has changed since he began coaching, how the Adidas scandal will affect the recruitment process and whether or not he believes athletes should be able to go straight to the pros out of high school. This has been edited for brevity and clarity.
KANSAN:
When you began coaching in 1993 in Cal, these exclusive contract agreements and partnerships with major apparel companies and colleges were almost unheard of. Now, these exclusive agreements even exist at the high school level. Have these exclusive agreements made recruiting harder and/ or blurred the lines of what is acceptable, and what isn’t, when it comes to recruiting?
TOWNSEND: That’s a
KANSAN: What does the
typical recruitment process look like for you?
TOWNSEND: I identify
a kid normally when he’s a freshman, sophomore at the latest, and then go see him play. Then, we narrow it down and by the time he’s a junior, he’s either one of our priority guys or not. If he’s a priority guy, we get seven opportunities to see him per year, so we will use all seven. By his senior year, we want to make sure the coach makes a home visit and get the kid here on campus, which is an official visit. His junior year also, if possible, we want to get him here on an unofficial visit to see a game or something like that to make sure we make his top eight list, because the kid normally narrows it down to five by his senior year.
KANSAN: You’ve recruit-
ed big-name talent such as Jamal Crawford back at Michigan, Andrew Wiggins, Sherron Collins, Brandon Rush, Frank Mason III and more. What has been your most memorable recruiting experience and why?
TOWNSEND: When I
saw Frank Mason because we actually went to see Jordan McLaughlin, who was one of the top point guards in the country. He happened to play against Frank, and I had no idea who Frank was, but he ended up playing really good. I called Frank Mason’s coach that night and said “Hey, that little guy, does he always play like that?” and he said “Every day, coach.”
Missy Minear/KANSAN Men’s basketball assistant coach Kurtis Townsend sat down with the Kansan to discuss the ever-changing landscape of college athletics. Josh Jackson, (Andrew) Wiggins, Jamal (Crawford), everyone knows those guys were great, so it’s not hard to see that, but a guy like Frank that was ranked 212 and ends up being College Player of the Year, to be able to find him, a hidden gem, he’s one I’ll never forget.
KANSAN: What is the most challenging aspect of recruiting at the college level? TOWNSEND: For us,
the schools we have to recruit against usually are Duke, Kentucky, Arizona, North Carolina and those programs speak for themselves. To have to go against those schools, that’s tough to do because they have as good a sell, not better, but just as good of basketball traditions as we do. So, the hard part is just getting the kid to think this is a better place than some of those.
KANSAN: You began
coaching in 1993 at the collegiate level. What has changed in the recruitment process since then, and to what do you attribute these changes?
TOWNSEND:
Cell phones were kind of just coming out in the early ‘90s, so you talked to kids on a landline to recruit them that way. Nowadays, nobody really talks on the phone. Kids are talking about “hit ‘em up on snap”
or “Instagram them” or, I mean I don’t even know all the stuff, Snapface. Is that such a thing? Social media had become so much more involved, all these kids want you to offer them. If you don’t offer them early, you won’t be in their final list. These kids are committing on social media now and kind of dissing other schools that were recruiting them. It’s now more about “Me, hey, look at me” rather than trying to get a good fit and the parents coming and making sure it’s a good fit for them. It’s just more social media driven now.
KANSAN: Given that Kansas is basically in the middle of nowhere and not very diverse, what attracts top name recruits to KU? How do you gain an edge in recruiting? TOWNSEND: I think
the tradition here and the fact that the inventor of the game, James Naismith, was the first coach, and that guys like Wilt Chamberlain played here. When you talk about the roots of basketball coming from here and the guys that played for Dr. Phog Allen like Adolph Rupp, Dean Smith, they all played here. For us, I don’t feel like it’s in the middle of nowhere because we are halfway between the west coast and east coast, so we are close enough that anyone could get here. But I think the sell is the tradition, and now
that Coach Self is a Hall of Fame coach, just like Duke has and North Carolina, and Kentucky. It’s a hard sell if it’s a kid from the city, but a lot of kids that just want to focus on basketball come here because it’s a place where they can come and get better at basketball with not as many distractions.
good question, but even in ‘93 at Cal, we were a Nike school. Really, everywhere I’ve been we have been Nike. They have had these agreements going on for a long time. I don’t think the shoe companies were trying to help as much until the summer programs were really strong, then they wanted to try and make sure that some of these kids stayed with their brand. Andrew Wiggins, for example, had always been a Nike kid. He told us he was going to be a Nike kid. When we recruited him, he even asked if it was OK to wear Nikes when he wasn’t playing, like around school. They kind of got these kids brainwashed into staying with their brand and sending them to schools with their brand.
KANSAN: One main con-
troversial question that was refueled by the Adidas scandal is the one and done rule. Do you believe players should be allowed to be recruited to the NBA straight out of high school? Why or why not?
“I think the tradition here and the fact that the inventor of the game, James Naismith, was the first coach, and that guys like Wilt Chamberlain played here.” Kurtis Townsend assistant coach
KANSAN: Have you ex-
perienced any changes in the recruitment process since the major Adidas scandal with Louisville and other universities, and AAU teams across the nation?
TOWNSEND: No, not
really. I think there are some AAU coaches that are nervous about whether there will even be grassroots basketball, but in reality nothing has changed as far as recruiting. But it will change if there is no grassroots and there is no summer play and summer teams. Then, it will turn back over to high schools. Back in the ‘90s, the high school coaches were way more involved than the summer coaches, and now it’s the opposite. I think it will be business as usual, but for some of those sum-
TOWNSEND: I think
some of them. I think a kid like Andrew Wiggins, Joel Embiid, guys that played for us, Josh Jackson, were good enough to go. I think the reason they made the rule was there were too many kids trying to jump, and it was hurting them because they weren’t good enough. So I think if they put something in place where there is a committee with the NBA that says “Hey, there’s a great chance that this one kid will be drafted,” they should be able to go. If the committee says they won’t, those kids should have to go to school and spend at least two years there so they can develop. I think if they did that, some of these kids that don’t have an interest in school and just want to get paid or make a quick buck, this would help
out with some of the stuff going on.
KANSAN: The NCAA’s fundamental regulatory arrangement requires colleges and universities to self-police and police one another. What system does KU have in place to comply with this requirement?
TOWNSEND: I think
our compliance is unbelievable. What they do for us is we meet once a month, and we have a daily compliance newsletter sent to us daily on new rules and changes or to remind us about rules, like not go to a high school twice in one week, little stuff. They do a great job of education. Their rule is if there is something in the gray area, to ask them first. I really don’t feel like they are the police. I feel like they are trying to help us, like if we are trying to do something, they help us do it legally. They are great at what they do. David Reed is the head of compliance, and he has a staff of about seven people. They are employed by the athletic department, so I think they are paid through the athletic department at KU, but they are responsible to police us. So, they are kind of responsible if anything goes wrong, it falls on them. But they do a great job.
KANSAN: With an in-
creased pressure on coaches to win games, what has to change to make recruiting honest and above board?
TOWNSEND: For the
most part, there is a lot of pressure to win, but most coaches are really good people in this profession. They’re not going to jeopardize or risk their job just to win a game or two more. I think the NCAA will come up with new stuff, but I think the FBI thing is going to scare everybody. Nobody wants to go to jail or lose their job, because most of these coaches get paid pretty good. The fact that it happened will make it better. It is competitive, and everyone wants to win, but not at all costs. We have certainly never felt like that (that we have to win at all costs) here.
KANSAN: What changes do you anticipate seeing in the future of the NCAA? TOWNSEND: I believe
some changes will be made to the summer basketball, what we call the grassroots system, and maybe be run through USA basketball. USA basketball takes the top players in the country and brings them together. So maybe the new system will go through them, because that’s been an organization that’s been going on for years and years, way before the grassroots. But for sure, it will be changed because of what happened.