Editor's note: This is the first in two-part series examining the aspects of the recruiting process for Ohio's basketball teams.
Getting recruits to come to Ohio isn't always easy ' just ask coach Sylvia Crawley.
Crawley has been at the top of the recruiting chain as an assistant at North Carolina and at the bottom as an assistant at Fordham. Now in her second season at Ohio, she knows the challenges of recruiting kids to become Bobcats.
The school isn't going to sell off the name Ohio
Crawley said. There are some different challenges that we face. You have to be a little more creative.
One of those challenges is finding a player that fits into the program. Top-tier recruits don't flock to the Mid-American Conference school, Crawley said, so she and her staff have to scour national, Amateur Athletic Union and high school tournaments to find other talented players.
I have to find that diamond in the rough Crawley said. I have to find that one kid that has just a ton of potential but isn't scoring points and that's the challenge
because when you get them here you never know if they are going to meet that potential.
Another problem that Crawley and her staff encounter is the school's location. Ohio's cold weather climate and recruiting budget, she said, makes it difficult to recruit kids from outside the Midwest. None of the players on Ohio's current roster are from outside the Midwest.
Crawley said that the school's rural location makes it difficult to get recruits from the inner cities to come to Athens, which is more than an hour from any metropolitan area.
Freshman Thia Gholson, who hails from inner-city Louisville, Ky., said that while moving to Athens has been an adjustment, it wasn't enough to keep her from coming.
I wanted to be closer to home
Gholson said. I wanted be able to have that bond with a coach like I did at my high school and just to be at home with a team.
In other cases, a team like Ohio will get lucky. Sometimes, one of those big recruits will look to transfer to a smaller school for various reasons. The Bobcats landed current leading scorer and rebounder Lauren Kohn from Syracuse and, last year, added former Miss Michigan runner-up Jennifer Poff from Michigan State.
Poff, who committed to Michigan State before her junior year of high school, said Michigan State was the perfect fit. The school was close to home, a family favorite and gave her a chance to play against the best competition in college basketball. But Poff quickly realized that Michigan State wasn't everything she thought it would be.
At Michigan State it's much more of a job
Poff said. I kind of wanted to get away from the whole Michigan scene. I wanted to start fresh.
I didn't know about Ohio, but I came down on my visit and I loved it. G? it was just the right fit at the right time for me.
Ohio's mid-major status gives it virtually no advantage over big name schools and the differences between it and other mid-major schools are very small
so every advantage helps.
One strength Crawley has emphasized is the coaching staff. Crawley said that having three coaches that specialize in different areas of the game ' the post
perimeter and point guard ' is a huge advantage because most schools only have a post and perimeter coach. It also doesn't hurt to have a former WNBA player as a coach.
When I was in high school I would have loved to have played for a former professional athlete, said Crawley
who played professionally for 11 years
including four seasons in the WNBA. We definitely try to use that as a selling point.
But ultimately
nothing is going be a bigger draw than the school itself.
The biggest thing is getting them here, Crawley said. Once we get them here we feel like our program and the school will sell itself.
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22690,2008-01-15 00:00:00,Men's Basketball: 'Cats change lineup
