Curious about basketball recruiting visits

Recruit visits and plays in a pickup game in the arena. Do NCAA rules allow interviews with the recruit and/or family? Can fans watch? How much do people covering basketball-crazy schools cover the public parts, such as a pickup game, of a visit?

 

Is it an official or unofficial visit? I'm not a rules expert by any stretch, but they might differ under those scenarios. Also, I don't see how the NCAA can stop a reporter from talking to a prospect.

 

Official vs. unofficial would matter.

I think as long as the school doesn't try to publicize the visit and put on a news conference everyone would be OK. They aren't supposed to publicize recruits or comment about them.

But if you were able to talk to the lad and his parents through your own efforts, you should be OK. Some schools will be nervous about this just the same.

 

NCAA rules apply only to the school, not recruits. You can talk to him all you want, official or unofficial, if he's OK with it. The school might get nervous about it. It cannot set up the interview (wink, wink) or let you know the kid is there (wink, wink). Go ahead and talk to him.

 

Right on. Some schools live by the letter of the law when it comes to this, but if you're resourceful and track the kid down on your own while he's there they can't do anything.

I've done it many times (I cover a high-major hoops team) and have never had a problem.

 

There's no reason why you can't talk to the kid while he is in town. As for people attending the pickup games, I was at a pickup game a few years ago when about 4,000 people showed up to watch some stud recruit play with a team that went to the Final Four the previous year.

 

When Eric Gordon visited Indiana a few weeks ago, you'd think it was an IU intersquad scrimmage game with as much attention as it got from fans and media alike. How IU got away with the rule of not publicizing the visit, I'll never know.

Recruits are always in game as far as we're concerned. In fact, that's a vital time to get info out of them, especially things like cell phone numbers, which might not be easy to get once the coach/SID puts a bug in their ear about clamming up.

 

What shecky said. The kid cannot get in trouble with the NCAA for talking. The school just can't set up an interview or talk about the kid while he's on an official visit.

 

Sounds like this weekend is the last big weekend for juco recruits who are signing early. Guess practice starts Oct. 1 in juco ball, so it's harder to get recruits to a four-year campus after this weekend ...