Recruiting: One mystery after another for your entertainment

Recruiting is an enormously popular subject with many college sports fans, and it's easy to see why.

So many recruitment stories are like mystery novels. They start slowly, take unexpected twists, and have multiple possible conclusions.

People are constantly searching for clues, espousing their own theories and predictions. Often, the endings were easily deduced before they happened. Now and then, it's something you never saw coming.

And to add to the popularity, the people who care almost always have rooting interests.

So it was in regards to Jarrod Uthoff of Cedar Rapids Jefferson going to Wisconsin. We'd heard Uthoff was enamored with the idea of staying close to home. We just didn't know that meant a drive of 2.5 hours instead of a half-hour.

I haven't heard a lot of gnashing of teeth or cries of “Judas!” in Uthoff's case. For one thing, he isn't a projected McDonald's All-American and 2012 first-round NBA draft pick.

Which doesn't, obviously, mean he won't turn out to be a fine collegian.

For another, Uthoff's emergence as a blue-chipper was meteoric. That didn't give recruitniks much time to fall in love with him like some kids you hear about for years.

A year ago at this time, Uthoff had no profile to speak of with major-college coaches. By this summer, he was offered scholarships by several of them. Including Iowa's.

Wisconsin is Uthoff's choice, we learned Monday night. A lot of casual fans in Iowa aren't even sure what the Badgers got or the Hawkeyes lost.

That wasn't the case several years ago when Jason Bohannon of Linn-Mar signed with Wisconsin. Bohannon and his team were fixtures at the state basketball tourney. Bohannon then gave Bo Ryan four good years at Wisconsin. He was a good one.

Make no mistake. Fran McCaffery's coaching staff at Iowa wanted Uthoff. He has, as they say, upside. Symbolically, it wouldn't have hurt to land a good in-state player to try to start a trend.

Panic, however, certainly isn't to be drawn from this. While McCaffery and his assistants begin the process of building relationships in Iowa with coaches and players, the most prudent thing they can do right now is to work the avenues they know best.

For instance, incoming freshman Melsahn Basabe of Long Island via a Massachusetts prep school has impressed people at the Prime Time League this summer. He was originally a McCaffery recruit when the coach was at Siena.

McCaffery was recruiting a Philadelphia-area guard named Devin Coleman when he was at Siena. Coleman told the coach he wanted to play in a bigger conference.

Now McCaffery is in the Big Ten, and prep senior-to-be Coleman visited Iowa last month. He is still weighing his options.

If Iowa fans would welcome a Philadelphia player who has scholarship offers from three Philly schools (LaSalle, St. Joseph's and Temple), they surely wouldn't hold hard feelings toward a Cedar Rapids kid who leaves the state. Right?

Well, on to the next recruit, and the next one, and the next one.

But one last note about Uthoff. He made his college announcement Monday night at the Eastern Iowa Airport, then hopped on a flight to Las Vegas.

There's something so Frank Sinatra or George Clooney or Vinny Chase from “Entourage” about that.

OK, so the kid went to Vegas to play in an AAU basketball tournament. It still sounds cool to me.