Behind the efforts of head coach Mark Gottfried and his crew of assistant coaches, the NC State men’s basketball team has already secured a commitment from one of the best high school players in the nation and appears to be in the mix, if not leading, for several others.
Fayetteville’s Dennis Smith Jr. — ranked No. 6 nationally according to the 247Sports composite — committed to the Wolfpack Sept. 10 and is the first five-star recruit to sign with NC State since 2012. In recent years, the basketball program has mainly recruited four-year players with few exceptions, but Smith has immediate NBA potential, as do the school’s other top targets. Why are elite recruits suddenly looking at NC State more seriously? There are several factors to be sure, but one seems to shadow all of the others, and its origin lies a short ride down I-40 West.
Since 2004, UNC-Chapel Hill has signed a total of 15 five-star recruits, Duke has picked up 19, while NC State has nabbed five. The fact is, even in a talent-rich area like the Triangle, the cream of the crop doesn’t often trickle down past the historical superpowers that are UNC and Duke. One-and-done players — those who declare for the NBA draft after just one college season — put tremendous stock in the amount of exposure, television and otherwise, that a school can offer, and it is no secret that the Wolfpack’s rivals in blue have largely cornered that market historically. But a shift in circumstances has diminished the advantage for one of these schools.
In early 2014, UNC academic advisor Mary Willingham alleged that many Tar Heel athletes couldn’t read or write at a college level, and before the ensuing storm settled, Rashad McCants, a former basketball player at the school, claimed to have taken fake classes and had academic papers written for him by tutors during his time there, including the 2005 NCAA Championship season. To no surprise, the NCAA reopened its just-closed 2010-to-2014 investigation into UNC’s athletic program within weeks.
The ongoing investigation was not always present in media coverage, but its effect was felt on the recruiting trail. The Tar Heels’ 54th-ranked recruiting haul was their worst in recorded history — their previous low was 15th — and it marked just the second time since 2004 that the school failed to sign a five-star recruit.
The next domino fell in June 2015, when the NCAA notified UNC of five Level I violations—reserved for academic fraud of the highest order—including lack of institutional control, the charge that resulted in a two-year postseason ban, a vacation of wins and a scholarship reduction for the University of Southern California in 2010. The NCAA will not reach a final ruling on this case until 2016, leaving recruits in the dark as to the impending punishment for the school.
The result is that top recruits, specifically those who plan to leave for the NBA after one or two seasons, are understandably apprehensive about the idea of playing for a school that might not be allowed to participate on the largest stage — March’s NCAA Tournament — in one or all of their collegiate seasons. There’s no question that the looming sanctions have played a role in the recruitment of five-star recruits Bam Adebayo and Rawle Alkins — who the Wolfpack and Tar Heels are actively pursuing.
NC State is the more risk-averse choice and, after a Sweet 16 visit in 2015,is a program on the rise with the ability to catapult young players of this caliber into the national spotlight. Couple this logic with the duo’s well-documented friendship with current commit Smith Jr., and you can see why the Wolfpack is 247Sports’ experts’ pick to land both. While far from a guarantee, this does provide some insight into the prevailing opinion of those who are more in the know than you or I.
If the Wolfpack were able to pull off such a coup, it would strike immediate and future dividends for the program, which has only had two players drafted to the NBA in the past five years. Part of the reason that Kentucky head coach John Calipari has been so successful at routinely recruiting elite players has been his proven track record with putting those players in the NBA. Gottfried gave us a flash of that ability with his development of T.J. Warren, now with the Phoenix Suns, but putting out multiple lottery picks in a short span would garner huge amounts of national attention, enabling the coaching staff to recruit farther from home. Only time will tell if the Wolfpack has sold Adebayo and Alkins on this vision, but if it has, expect a redistribution of power in one of the meccas of college basketball.
