For those that don't think they will recruit Vegas...

[Bullmastiff 1]

If there are any concerns about whether this staff will recruit Vegas or not in the future..

"We have three locals coming in (including a transfer) and more
importantly, identified some really great kids in Southern Nevada for
next year and already have seven offers out there for the Class of 2016.
Because of the lateness getting in we recruited in a much wider area
than we normally would. We looked at some guys across the country but
moving forward we really want to make our home base Nevada, California,
Utah, Arizona, Hawaii, Washington and also the Houston area"

Tony Sanchez

 

[spudreb]

This is what many of us had already figured out. Thanks for finding the quote, Bullmastiff1. I had heard him say that next year will start the bigger flow of locals. I was commenting elsewhere earlier today that we didn't have any Utah commits in this class. They definitely need to get someone in there because there are some good players coming out of that state.

 

[Bullmastiff 1]

I agree it would be nice if they could get their foot in the door with Utah a bit more.

 

[unlv7163]

Solid recruiting base for UNLV. You have to recruit locally to be successful in my opinion.

 

[Bullmastiff 1]

Vegas can be a solid recruiting base, that said there are some numbers out there that would dispute that you have to recruiting locally to be successful. Here are a couple of examples.

First thing we have to do is qualify that Las Vegas is about 75-80% if the population of Nevada so you basically have to treat it like a state not a city in my opinion.

Oregon recruited 0 players from the state of Oregon. Ok I can see where the argument might be made that Oregon has a small population base.

So...

Michigan State (9th largest population base in the country) I believe had only 5 kids out of 25 from the entire state of Michigan. Pretty successful school.

Arizona and Arizona State battle it out in the Tempe/Phoenix/Tuscon area which would account for a lager population base than Las Vegas and both had recruiting classes of about 22-25 and neither of them had more than 6 recruits from the state of Arizona.


The only schools that primarily recruit instate are those in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania Texas and California. All of which are traditional powerhouse schools.

The number of kids recruited out of Las Vegas should not be the issue, I think the quality of the kids UNLV can keep is the bigger issue. Keep the best in town if you can. You are always going to lose some, Texas loses kids to USC, California kids go to Oregon it happens.

Had UNLV been able to keep Nela they would have retained three of the top 10 recruits from Vegas in town. I think that is a solid number.

 

[unlv7163]

Guess I should clarify. By "locally", I mean your state and neighboring states. "Regionally" would be a better term. Power 5 conference teams have a bigger recruiting budget than UNLV does (though the gap is closing ). Vegas produces enough talent that you have to win some of those battles if you want to be a viable option for better talent in surrounding areas. Don't think you should scrape the bottom of the Las Vegas barrell, but need to convince players to choose UNLV over other MWC and lower level power 5 teams more often than not.

 

[Bullmastiff 1]

I think we are saying the same things in different ways...