Basketball recruiting can be hectic, downright exhausting even. Those are the good days. Now throw in the pandemic.
Contact periods, visits, even the AAU season were thrown out of whack.
Central Missouri’s Chris Richardson was one of the few in good shape, considering.
The Mules’ staff already concluded their 2020 class in May. One less thing to worry about.
Then Will Ryan resigned at Wheeling University to take a Division I job at Green Bay.
Richardson applied for the Cardinals’ opening and was selected from an extensive and deep coaching pool.
That was the good news. A head coaching position as a solid program in one of the more exciting conferences in Division II.
Bad news? The recruiting class, while begun, isn’t finished. Oh, and the team’s best returning player and one of the more dynamic players in the Mountain East Conference? Yeah, he entered the training portal.
Have at it.
Richardson managed to piece together a solid recruiting class despite a lack of lead time. That class will be detailed in a Friday story on LedeNews.com.
But for now, let’s talk the process and its challenges.
This had to be one of the more interesting and challenge recruiting periods of your career?
It’s funny. A lot of times in Division II, you are basically done recruiting going into the summer, but you know that in July and, every now and then, in August, there may be a guy or two out there that you end up trying to get. But at Central Missouri this year, we were done earlier than we’d ever been before. Basically, we were done in early May. I was kind of enjoying having all of that out of the way.
Right back to work. Being so late in the hour, was it tough rounding together a recruiting class? Had Coach Allen already secured any commitments, or were you starting from scratch?
Then I took this job and it’s right back to work. With how things have been, I’ve been lucky because a lot of people are looking out for me out there. One thing I wanted to make clear though is that Will Ryan did a great job early of getting guys to commit like Andrew Taylor, D.J. Jenkins, and Trey Stoffer. They were already on board. He had also been recruiting Jaylan Hewitt already and got us off to a great start. After that, I just had to look at what we had, what we needed, who was available and go from there. Everybody was in the same boat though. In some senses it was unique just because of the circumstances.
To top it off, your leading scorer Jordan Reid, one of the top players in the MEC, entered the transfer portal. He was one of a number of players to do so, with most being freshman. How crucial was it to convince him to return for his senior season?
First of all, he’s such a great kid. Everyone speaks highly of him, from the president all the way down to the people in the cafeteria, all over campus; he has a great reputation. So, when I found out I was going to be the coach, he actually reached out to me before I could reach out to him. I told him I respected the process but wanted him to get to know me. He was a priority for me, not only because of what he can do on the floor, but from all the references, he’s the exact type of guy you want to coach. I tried not to wear him out, but he also knew that I was available to talk if he had specific questions. We covered a number of different things during our conversations and I’m ecstatic that he decided to stay. Just being around him the last couple of weeks, his leadership is next level. It’s rare. It’s special.
Assuming no rest for the weary, did you have any down time between putting the 2020 class to bed and getting started on the 2021 group?
We’ve been pretty aggressive building our list for the 2021 class. Each class is crucial, but if you look at our roster, we have 13 juniors and seniors. We’re really going to hit the high school ranks hard in this upcoming class. That group will be the foundation of things moving forward. We’re also really trying to reopen some ties locally, regionally and then in our immediate footprint of 3-4 hours travel distance. In some of those areas, there are a lot of proud alumni and a lot of names have come from those areas that have helped build this program into what it’s been over the years. So no, there’s was no rest, not even a little and actually had to multitask in that regard. We’re already behind from a 2021 standpoint and have people hitting us up about 2022 guys already. But that’s what we sign up for. We love to do it. There’s a lot of positive momentum here, not just for the program, but within the campus. There’s energy here. That last two weeks the students have been back, it’s been unbelievable.
Not just in terms of recruiting, I imagine this has been one of the stranger seasons overall, given all the adjustments, restrictions, cancellations, and ever-changing edicts handed down from the NCAA.
I know I appreciate things a bit more than I did when things got shut down. There are always positives and every cloud has a silver lining. For me personally, I got to have three more months with my family when normally I’d be out on the road, recruiting, evaluating, bringing players to campus. That was a big positive in the spring. Now in the fall, we’re back on campus and everyone seems willing to make the necessary sacrifices to continue to make this work. We’re here. We have a chance to make those sacrifices and get better every day. It’s going to be an exciting couple of months.
