Diary Series: Matt O'Brien, Asst. Coach - Vermont

As league play is in full swing and teams are starting to evolve to be at their best come tournament time, I wanted to take some time out to talk about recruiting.  This time of year is critical for your team – you want to keep them sharp and rested for the upcoming home stretch.  With all that is on the “to-do” of college coaches, recruiting needs to continue to stay on that list.  At Vermont, we try to do at least one recruiting thing a day and hopefully more; calling a prospect, high school coach, AAU coach, getting a transcript, watching tapes and YouTube highlights.  When you have a little break in the schedule or an off day, we get out to see one of these high school recruits.  The more you can get in during these busy times, the farther ahead you are in developing the relationships needed to land the prospect in the spring, summer or fall. 

When I am looking to prospective student-athletes, I always want to find kids that are naturals.  This means that I am looking for players who the game is easy for, they play it almost effortlessly.  Obviously, talent-level, size, strength, speed, athleticism, skill-level are all very important and go into the equation in the evaluation process.  But over all this I think it is important to weigh the how much is he a natural. 

For example, you know when you see the post player who is a bit undersized, doesn’t really look like he would be a dominant post player, but every time he catches the ball near the rim he finds a way to put the ball in the basket.  He catches difficult passes and gets them to the rim quickly from difficult angles.  It doesn’t look pretty all the time but it always goes in.  On the other hand, you see a guy who has size, has great length and is bouncy.  But when you really watch this player, they struggle to catch the ball (a skill many post players struggle to master) and doesn’t finish well in traffic even though he dunks the ball great on breakaways.  At Vermont, we’ll take the first kid. 

With guards, we look for guys who can make plays in traffic, don’t allow defenders to get speed them up when pressured, and who make hard shots look easy.  These guys do not need a high volume of shots to be effective; they are able to maximize their opportunities.  We have a player right now on our team who often seems to get himself in the middle of defenders but the ball is never stolen from him.  He just has a knack for finding his way out of trouble and it never really seems hard for him.  He is a natural.

Naturals have value because they have a higher ceiling and can learn and develop new skills a lot quicker than most players.  This allows them to better develop their game over the four years they are here. Typically when you see a guy make huge strides from one year to the next, those guys are naturals – basketball is just easy for them.

At the end of the day, these naturals have skills that as coaches we can’t teach. We can help a post player develop his ability to catch and finish, but sometimes certain guys have it and others don’t.  Certain guards just have the ability to not be bothered by what defenses throw at them while others don’t.

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