WKU Recruiting: Taking the Next Step Will Help Stansbury Beat More Power Schools for Players

On Tuesday afternoon, 4-star forward Selton Miguel chose the Kansas State Wildcats over WKU.

A little over a week before that 4-star center Eddie Lampkin chose TCU over WKU as well.

While each case is different, it just shows how hard it is for WKU head coach Rick Stansbury to compete against bigger schools for traditional players. As his fourth season on the Hill is set to start, Stansbury has dug out of the roster hole that he inherited after Ray Harper’s dismissal.

Stansbury now has three years of data at WKU and can’t sell the immediate playing time that he offered when he arrived. Stansbury has been very successful thus far bringing talent to WKU unheard of since the early 1970’s. Players such as Charles Bassey, Josh Anderson, Dalano Banton & Jordan Rawls were unheard of pipe dreams during previous regimes (remember the Terrance Boyd saga?).

Stansbury has used a combination of developing relationships with prospects early (Mitchell Robinson, Bassey), finding high-level high school juniors that are looking to reclassify (Bassey, Banton, Rawls), and transfers (traditional and graduate) to fill all four rosters with the most talented players possible. The results have been mixed with heights such as the NIT final four run and lows such as an early C-USA Tournament exit (with an on the fly flawed roster that he inherited) and an underachieving season mixed in (2018–19).

As the roster has stabilized he has continued to target high-level high school players but is now having a harder time reeling in talented players against bigger schools. Since Bassey’s talented 2018 class (with Tolu Smith, Jeremiah Gambrell both had multiple P5 offers), WKU had struggled to get traditional high level senior high school prospects to come to WKU.

Stansbury continues to have a great eye for talent and has gotten many high-level players to consider coming to Bowling Green. 2019 4-star players such as Dontaie Allen (Kentucky), KyKy Tandy (Xavier), Kobe Brown (Missouri) & Kira Lewis (Alabama) all visited WKU early in the process and were interested but ultimately chose the power schools over the Tops. Rick Stansbury ultimately decided to bring in-state diamond in the rough players Isiah Cozart & Jackson Harlan to bolster his roster and supplemented the missed talent with talented reclassified players such as Rawls and grad transfers. While all three could end up being solid players, the trend is a little alarming and should cause some concern.

That trend has carried over to the 2020 class as is evidenced by Miguel & Lampkin’s recent commitments elsewhere. Both visited WKU but Stansbury couldn’t close the deal and lost momentum as their recruitments dragged on. There are many factors that are playing against WKU in recruiting that were more prominent prior to Stansbury’s arrival. Factors such as WKU’s status as a “mid-major”, conference tv deal, name recognition, and lack of recent national success all make it hard for WKU to compete against Power schools for players.

In the past WKU succeeded by going after less-heralded players that were either under-recruited, undersized or underdeveloped to much success. When Stansbury arrived, he made bold claims that he’ll go after players that aren’t supposed to go to Western and that they’ll get some that they’re not supposed to get. He succeeded in that early but now has to overcome a recent record of not making the NCAA tournament, Charles Bassey not being one and done and the same old factors listed above.

There is one way for Stansbury to overcome the issues above and that is to start winning on a higher level. WKU must return to the NCAA tournament this season and start to show recruits that he is making WKU one of the nationals better mid-major programs. When you look at the 2019 recruiting rankings schools such as Harvard, Wichita & VCU got 4-star talent and they all have recent NCAA success to sell. Perception is reality to high school prospects and most probably haven’t heard of Western Kentucky let alone can tell their friends/family why they should go to Bowling Green over the P5 program they’ve heard of. Having tangible results to show recruits will pay dividends in the future.

WKU’s 2020 class is still a one man band right now as 3-star guard commitment Dayvion McKnight did have a Power conference offer from Northwestern, but he falls more under the early relationship category instead of a highly recruited 4-star prospect. Rick Stansbury still has many talented players such as JJ Traynor, Josh Hall, and Kyree Walker all considering WKU. If he wants to get any player of that caliber moving forward he’ll have to overcome the perception gap and objections listed above. The easiest way to do that is to win and win big. 2019–20 is his best opportunity to break through and should he do it, don’t be shocked if he starts winning some more recruiting battles as a result.