Jay Wright: How He Recruits Kids Who Fit Their Culture

This comes from a Coaching U Podcast interview with Jay Wright.  He talks about the type of player that they recruit and how they present their culture to the kid, his family, and his coaches.  The dynamics of recruiting and coaching kids are different, and here he talks about how he is honest and up-front early, and he talks about how important it is for him and his staff to recruit character and fit as much as talent.

As a player or a parent, make sure that the fit - not just the level - is right, make sure that the coaches have yours our your child's best interest at heart, and that the program focuses on growth and development of the person, not just the player.

Young athletes today are different and the way you have to recruit them has to be different.  You have to keep learning because the one thing that is definite in life is change, and things change.  Part of our challenge is we know what kids used to be like and what WE used to be like.  The guys that we are recruiting don’t have the expectations that we had.  I had to learn that over the years.  When we are recruiting, we are really looking for the talent level that we need and we are looking at the people around them because its not like it used to be where a parent sends the kid to you, you’re the coach, and they tell the kid – “Do what the coach says.”  Everyone is involved now and we have to make sure that we sit down with the parent, we sit down with the AAU coach, and we sit down with any other person in their circle and explain to them what Villanova is all about and explain to them what our culture is, and really – without trying to convince them, but say,

“Do you think that this culture is best for your son, or your student, or your player?”

I’m going to tell you what it is and if you believe in it, you gotta let them fail, you gotta let them struggle, and you gotta let us work it out.

We’ll communicate with you, but we are going to tell you what it is up front and our goal is for him to be the best student, the best man, and the best player that he can be at the end.  That’s our goal.  Its not simply to make him an NBA player.  We want him to be an NBA player, but to also be the best student and the best player.  If you don’t think that its important, then don’t send him to Villanova.  I think its our responsibility as a program, because we know what our culture is and we know who is going to be successful here, when we are dealing with kids, we have to make sure that we are picking the ones that we know are going to be successful.  We don’t want to mislead them to get them here and then when they get here and then try to get them to buy-in to the culture.  We have to know from our experience that they are going to enjoy it and be successful here.