Any college basketball coach, on the men's or women's side, will tell you that there is no more important month in recruiting than July. The summer live evaluation periods give coaches an opportunity to watch prospects they have been recruiting for many months and sometimes years plus any new recruits they want to target heading into the fall.
It is a time when official visits get arranged and when coaches make their final push for most prospects before decisions are made in the fall. The summer recruiting season is when most of the important work gets done on the recruiting side.
However, this year that could be in jeopardy because of the COVID-19 health crisis. The current recruiting dead period was an extension of a decision made earlier in the spring and it is set to expire on May 31. Tuesday, the National Association of Basketball Coaches and the Women's Basketball Coaches Association released a joint statement urging the NCAA to extend the recruiting dead period once again through July 31.
The summer live evaluation period is currently set to take place throughout the months of June and July. Last year June was added to summer recruiting calendar to add scholastic events approved by the NCAA and organized by the NFHS to help facilitate even more in-person evaluation time for college coaches in a high school setting as opposed to a travel ball setting.
Three separate weekends in July are set to serve as more opportunities for coaches to evaluate prospects with some of that time being reserved to allow prospects to play with travel teams in front of coaches.
Should the NCAA take up the recommendation from the NABC and WBCA it would eliminate those times for evaluation that would have to be made up in a different way at a later time.
"The summer months are crucial to the recruiting process for coaches and prospective student-athletes alike," NABC President and TCU head coach Jamie Dixon said in a statement. "The NABC is committed to working alongside the WBCA, the NCAA and scholastic and non-scholastic event personnel to encourage the development of alternative evaluation opportunities as soon as circumstances allow. It is important to note that these temporary changes would not decrease the number of available scholarship opportunities.
"The NABC Board of Directors does not take the impact of this recommendation lightly. However, our highest priority must remain the wellbeing of prospects, their families, our current teams, and our fellow coaches. We must also be respectful to the financial burdens that many of our institutions and prospects' families are currently facing."
The NCAA will decide later this month whether or not if it will indeed extend the recruiting dead period through the end of July. One sign that it could very well take up the NABC and WBCA on their recommendation is that shortly after the statement from Dixon was released the NCAA announced that its College Basketball Academy set for July was canceled.
The event was introduced last summer as an alternative to coaches traveling the country to see prospects in person with their travel ball teams. Instead, the College Basketball Academy was a camp over the course of a week that would give coaches a chance to see many recruits from four regions of the country in one spot. Last year's event in the West region took place at Grand Canyon University.
This summer's event was set to take place at the University of Utah with three other locations in South, Midwest and East to serve recruits from those areas. This year's event was set to take place July 20-26.
"Every attempt was made to conduct the Academy for the benefit of the prospective student-athletes and college basketball coaches, who attend for evaluation purposes, but the current circumstances could not ensure health and safety for those attending," NCAA senior vice president for basketball, Dan Gavitt, said in a statement.
UA women's basketball coach Adia Barnes said earlier in the month that she could envision a scenario where games continue but coaches are not allowed to attend and would instead watch streams of the games to do their evaluations remotely.
"If we don't go out in July, that's our biggest recruiting month," she said in a virtual press conference with local media members back on May 1. "That's going to tremendously change a lot, because kids that we would have seen in the earlier classes we're not gonna see. Now we're using more stuff online.
"I think they are planning on playing in July, I don't know if it's gonna be with coaches. So, there might be more of watching on a computer."
A decision to cancel the June and July live evaluation periods could present more challenges for the NCAA in deciding how it will refigure the recruiting calendar. Some states, such as California, are planning to begin school earlier than usual to make up for lost time because of the coronavirus pandemic meaning simply moving the live evaluation periods to August could overlap with school for recruits.
