Iowa's Fran McCaffery discusses ongoing recruiting

Iowa men's basketball coach Fran McCaffery was asked today about how recruiting was developing in his program. Here are his answers:

Q. How are things going with recruiting?

McCAFFERY: I think they're going good. The thing with recruiting is they can always be going good or they can always be going bad until you get somebody that you really like and then they have to be good. Sometimes you get somebody that you like and then they're not any good anyway. That's the thing about recruiting. How many times have you heard, this is a top ten recruiting class, whatever, and sometimes the guys nobody ever heard of end up being great.

I would say in terms of answering the specific question how is recruiting going, we've been very well received. There's interest. There's interest on behalf of good players, but by the same token they're always going to be interested in other places, as well, and we've just got to reel them in.

Q. Does it help now that you've got some games at Iowa as opposed to before the season when you were trying to recruit?

McCAFFERY: I think at some level everybody kind of wants to see you there. You can talk about what you did somewhere else, and that only takes you so far, I think. So the fact that we've come here, we've done okay, we need to do better, but at least they can say, okay, we see how they play, we see his coaching philosophy, his coaching style. They watch the players to see if they enjoy playing in that type of system, are they having fun, are they enjoying what we're doing, are they buying in, all those things I think would impact a prospect's decision on whether or not he would want to come here. And I think from that standpoint it's been very positive. Clearly the players are playing to their maximum potential and enjoying the style of play and competing.

I think our crowds have responded well to our players, and I think that's been good. I mean, we've needed that. We need that energy level when we're playing the teams that we're playing.

So I think all that together would make someone say, hey, that would be a really good place to go.

Q. Have you seen enough of the high school ball out here to kind of give your opinion of it? It seems nationally Iowa high school basketball doesn't have a great reputation, but you've been here for a while now; are you surprised just by what you've seen?

McCAFFERY: I've been impressed. I've been impressed by the coaching. I think we've got really good players. I think on sheer numbers in terms of population, how many of them are going to be high, high major players. There's going to be some. We've always had some. We've had some great ones. But it's not like there's going to be 50 in any given year. There's going to be some, and we've got to get some of those kids to come here.

Q. Will Melsahn's success help you recruit the East Coast, New York areas and areas you've been at?

McCAFFERY: I think it will, and I think when prospects come to campus from the east and get a chance to spend some time with him and he can relate his experience and how it's going, both academically, athletically and socially, I think that will help.

Q. Is your first priority in state and then go beyond, or do you look at it that way when you're talking about recruiting?

McCAFFERY: I look at what our needs are and who can fulfill those needs. If we could fulfill them all within state, that would be great. If we need to go outside the state to fill them all, that's what we'll do. But I can tell you there's players in state that can play. You look at a guy like Zach McCabe, I can't even tell you how hard he was recruited. But I can tell you what, he can play anywhere. And I'm glad we have him. And there's others like him.