Today, while driving home from school, I turned on the ESPN College Basketball Insider and UCSB gets another mention, albeit, a very short mention. If you fast forward to 15:15 of the podcast, you'll hear Doug Gottleib (who "pimps" UCSB like none other on that podcast) discussing Washington State Cougar point guard Taylor Rochestie.
Rochestie is a native Santa Barbaran who attended SB High. I don't know the story, but as Doug Gottleib tells it, UCSB wanted Rochestie to walk-on. Instead, he attended Tulane and transferred to WSU. Now, he's the starting point guard for the Cougars. Not bad, huh?
The point that Gottleib makes is a good one (and this segues into my post which is actually going to be above this). Washington State is recruiting players who (1) fit their philosophy and (2) they're not afraid to go after players who are not highly recruited.
This is an important message that the "UCSB can never win like the old days because we can't get the players and we don't have the resources" type of fans need to remember. WSU is the #8 team in the country right now. Of course, they have the conference advantage. However, conference isn't everything. They're not afraid to recruit players who aren't highly recruited. For example, one of their starting guards, Kyle Weaver (as Doug G. tells it) had only one other offer and it was from Bradley University. Moral of the story: even in the internet age, it's possible to find guys like Kyle Weaver and get them to your school if you look in the right spots.
Below is the ESPN link to their page for the podcast.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espnradio/podcast/archive?id=2689788
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