With this season’s Illini we see two extremes of how things work out (or not) for home-grown talent.
With Ayo, he becomes a great star and one of the best Illini ever. With Miller, we see home-grown talent that fails to make it past his first year in his home State (for whatever reasons).
With college ball virtually embracing full-on “free agency”, a premium that may have once existed on collecting in-State talent is now as unnecessary as it has ever been. While it’s great to maintain good relations with the locals, it’s now more important to develop and promote your roundball brand to the Nation (and World) at large. And find guys who buy-in to your vision wherever you find them.
In baseball the saying goes that, “We root now for laundry” (the logo of our team) now. Baseball has been a game of movable pieces and free-agents for years and players have become brands unto themselves more than a member of any one club. So it shall be in major college basketball.
If coaches are free to come and go as they wish (or quickly get shown the door), then players should have that right as well. Players do not have the protection of a contract. If higher education is supposed to prepare one for getting useful employment, then players who can prepare themselves better for work and life somewhere else after a year should have and take that option without restrictions or penalty.
Be a destination where you can succeed and prosper and have a brand that people know and like and you’ll have a trail of talent waiting at your door. The legacy Blue Bloods have never looked so vulnerable as they do now. The window is open for many programs to elevate their National standing quickly. We’ll see who jumps into the void and makes a big splash.