Arkansas has been getting plenty of basketball recruiting while on campus and now is able to go live this weekend on the road, where there is a much different landscape than in the past.
Razorback head coach Eric Musselman and his staff, including new assistant Corey Williams (whose hire was officially announced Wednesday) and Anthony Ruta, who has not been officially announced as of yet, can join their fellow college coaches in watching AAU action this weekend.
Ironically, some of the nation’s best high school basketball talent came to the state for the Real Deal in the Rock in Little Rock and The Warm Up AAU in Northwest Arkansas earlier this month, but college coaches were not allowed on hand as it was a closed period.
This weekend’s events include the Nike EYBL Boo Williams session in Hampton, Va., Under Armour UAA II in Kansas City and an Adidas Gauntlet tournament in Dallas, Texas.
Some of the guys Musselman and Ruta are expected to check out are 2020 G Moses Moody (Bradley Beal), 2020 F Chris Moore and 2020 C-F Jaylin Williams (Woodz Elite), 2020 PF Woody Newton (Team Takeover) and 2021 G Trey Alexander (Team Griffin) among others. The last two were recently offered by Arkansas.
Williams will be checking out 2020 or 2019 target Kyree Walker (Dream Vision), 2020 PG Dalen Terry (Compton Magic) along with Terran Williams and Jalen Ricks of the 16-and-under Arkansas Hawks as well as many others.
This weekend is the only live weekend in April for coaches under new NCAA recruiting rules that came out of recommendations from the Commission on College Basketball, chaired by Condoleezza Rice.
The changes were due in part to the belief that the current AAU recruiting model led to too much power in the hands of AAU coaches and the recent FBI investigation into recruiting corruption that nabbed several college assistants.
Another change is that coaches, who are allowed 130 days on the road to recruit, were allowed to take home visits in April instead of waiting until prospects had finished their junior seasons.
May was and will remain a quiet period, meaning that coaches cannot go on the road. Prospects are allowed to take unofficial or official visits to schools.
They will lead into the summer where coaches used to have three weekends where they could watch prospects at the shoe-sponsored events.
But this summer coaches will be able to watch prospects for just one week in June and that must be while they are playing with their high school teammates.
Coaches are also only allowed to go to just one shoe company-sponsored event in July instead of three.
A second weekend in July will be six days long and allow coaches to see prospects at camps put on by the NCAA with the help of the NBA, NBA Players Association and USA basketball.
It basically is a move designed to take power away from the AAU organizations and put it back in the hands of parents and high school coaches.
Arkansas appears to be positioning itself to have several 2020 scholarships available by adding some graduate transfers with one year of eligibility in the 2019 class.
While Kentucky head coach John Calipari and Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski have made an art of taking one-and-done prospects that play one college season and head to the NBA, Musselman has carved a niche in the one-more-and-done market.
Musselman, who said earlier that he has three scholarships available this spring, has already added the signature of UNC-Wilmington graduate transfer forward Jeantal Cylla (6-7, 215), who committed and signed with the Razorbacks last Saturday.