Every year when the NCAA Tournament comes around, millions of Americans get glued to their televisions. Or at least for the first weekend. Tourney time is perhaps the most exciting time in sports, certainly amongst college athletics. It is no secret that March Madness is all about the upsets and everyone loves to get them right. It is the single elimination winner take all format that makes the tournament so electrifying. Every game quite literally is the realization of one team worth of players basketball dreams come true, and gut wrenching despair for the losing opposition. But what makes the upsets so fun to pick is that there are more than 350 teams in Division 1 Men’s and Women’s Basketball. The tournament is probably the only true reminder of this on National television every year.

What makes an Upset?

As a recruiting coach and a college sports fan I am constantly watching random college games as much as possible. I have been asked the question more than a few times by my family members “what Division are these teams from?” I chuckle most of the time because it is exceedingly rare for a non-D1 basketball program to ever get on a national cable television station. Whether we are familiar with schools like Longwood University, Bryant University, and Jacksonville State, they are Division 1 and the tournament allows us to “put respect on their names” to quote the rapper Birdman. An upset essentially means a school that wasn’t supposed to win, won their game. But why is the lesser known school not supposed to win? Does having more people know your name make you better at basketball? That’s like suggesting how many Instagram followers someone has is a reflection of how nice a person they are. The two are not directly linked. But because the power five conferences dominate the national television media, the world of basketball recruits remain mostly ignorant of the other 25+ conferences that offer Division 1 basketball in the NCAA, along with the general public.

Most people couldn’t tell you that Longwood University is public university in the state of Virginia. Matter of fact, most people don’t know that Jacksonville State University (JSU) is not even in Jacksonville, Florida (it is in Alabama). Not to be confused with Jacksonville University, who is private and located in Jax, FL and beat JSU in their final game of the regular season. There is nothing wrong with a recruit setting their sites on Division 1 but the D1 world is a wide spectrum. It is surprising whenever a blue blood program like Kentucky loses a game in the tournament to the little known Saint Peters University, primarily because we are so miseducated on how recruiting actually works in the college world. March Madness is a wonderful case study about how recruiting actually plays out across the NCAA and I would like to put things into perspective.

The Power 5 Problem – Every Kiss Begins with (K)ay

The power five conferences, particularly the top basketball programs in the country are going to find most of the most talented players across the nation and convince them to come to their campuses to play basketball. There is no way around that. In fact, it is unlikely that any of the players on Saint Peters team were ever considered as a recruit by Kentucky’s coaching staff. So the real question the tournament is posing is how does a team of “Kentucky rejects” end up beating a team full of ESPN 100 ranked players? Clearly the small school in New Jersey can play basketball and the psychology of sports recruiting gives a quality answer.

Big name programs like Kentucky are looking for talented players, but they are searching for a specific type or “brand” of player. They are generally aiming to recruit athletes who are incredibly high ranked in the Nation with the measurable size, and a long list of individual accolades. They generally have played on hyper elite high school programs, and members of major AAU or traveling basketball clubs. Essentially Kentucky is not looking for players who are “under the radar”. In fact, the way that they recruit makes it highly unlikely to find the next C.J. McCollum or Fred VanVleet, diamonds in the rough who went from being under-recruited to becoming NBA stars. This is because Kentucky essentially only goes shopping for diamonds at the biggest “diamond retailers” in the country. It seems every kiss does begin with K…

The tournament shows us that although the biggest name schools will have many future NBA players on their rosters, they do not represent all the talented basketball players in the country. Saint Peters University was able to beat Kentucky because their players might not have been who Kentucky was looking for, but still were very talented in their own right.

There are Talented Athletes Everywhere

There are talented athletes all across the NCAA. In Division 1, not being recruited by top programs doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t play with the players at those schools. Coaches may overlook an athlete for any number of reasons. It could be their size, their grades, the high school they played for, the AAU team they played for, and particularly the camps and tournaments they did/did not attend. There are only a few roster spots available each year on the most well-known basketball programs in Division 1 so it is impossible for all of the talented players to make it onto those teams. Saint Peters top 5 scorers in their upset win against Kentucky included 3 state champions and an Under 18 FIBA Africa Champion. Clearly these players knew how to win before arriving at Saint Peters.

The irony that comes along with focusing on the big-name programs so heavily all year, is that most high school recruits feel like they are less than if they don’t go to a school like that. Therefore the transfer portal has become so necessary. Most recruits who do go to big name schools are more likely to be unhappy with their playing time and opportunities than they are to be a starter immediately. As a result many of these athletes who “made a mistake” when choosing their first school will look for smaller schools like Saint Peters. Longwood University, another little-known tournament team carried six D1 transfer players on their roster, in addition to 1 JUCO transfer. Who goes where in recruiting is as much about politics as it is about talent.

Using the tournament as a microcosm, we can get a better understanding of who goes where and why. The simplest way to determine talent from politics is to consider that at least half of the players on big name D1 programs could be swapped out with players from the “small conference” teams and their talent level would be overwhelmingly the same. People will notice if future lottery pick Paolo Banchero is not on Duke’s team, but the 10th guy on Duke’s depth chart is unlikely to be missed either by name or talent production. Similarly, at least half of D2 players could belong in D1, swapping out with the bottom half of D1 talent. This is even true for D3 player amongst D2 players. This past year there were even Division 1 teams who lost to non-D1 opponents. Including a D3 program that without scholarships beat a D1 opponent in Incarnate Word University (shoutout to Concordia University of Texas)! For all NCAA sports there are thousands of talented athletes, and they don’t all wear uniforms that say SEC or ACC on them.

Find Your Best Fit School

If you are a recruit looking to play basketball or any sport, you may be destined for a career in one of the power conferences. But most recruits will not. Those who transfer out of those schools further attest that the grass is not always greener on the other side. It is likely that the National Champions in D1 Men’s and Women’s Basketball this year will be one of the perennial basketball powers. But the tournament is proof that big name schools are not the only place where you can accomplish big things. If you are being recruited by a smaller school that you have not heard of, don’t pass up on the opportunity too easily. There is no way to know whether you are being recruited by the next Hampton, George Mason, Lehigh, Florida Gulf Coast, or even Saint Peters. All of Longwood’s transfer players are proof that what matters most is that you find a coach who believes in you as much as you believe in yourself.

KNOW THE GAME. WIN THE GAME.

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