Issue date: 2/8/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Grayce Turnbach Men's basketball coach Matthew Macciocca looks on at prospective athletes to enter the Cabrini athletics program.

The very time consuming recruiting process begins a year in advance for men's basketball here at Cabrini.

"We do this in four phases," head men's basketball coach Matthew Macciocca, said. Gradually, each phase requires more involvement.

Phase one.

The coaches go and see the possible recruits over the summer in summer league games, camps and showcases. At one of these tournaments it's possible to see about 600 players in one day.

The process normally begins at the end of the student's junior year because Cabrini is a division III school. A division I school will begin they're recruiting process as early as freshman and sophomore year.

Cabrini uses scouting services as resources to discover players. These scouting services go out and rate players and then send the ratings to their subscribers. A second way to obtain information about a player is word of mouth. What that means is, people who have been in the sport for years develop contacts who relay information to them about possible recruits.

Though there are so many athletes who play, Macciocca said that it is very rare for someone "to fall through the cracks." What he's saying is that there is always going to be someone who knows someone else who has information about a player and so on and so forth.

Phase two.

In the second phase, the coaches go to open gyms, workouts, and get in contact with the coach. Throughout the next few phases a relationship with the player grows as well as the relationship with the coach.

After meeting the players, the coaches try and sift through the ones that they feel are going to mesh well with Cabrini, as well as who is going to take the team to the next level. They'll be able to watch the players in a later phase in order to decide this.

During the phases, players receive constant mailings from Cabrini. Macciocca referred to this as "propaganda." The purpose of propaganda is to have the athletes constantly seeing Cabrini. It is always something that is positive about Cabrini, but never anything negative towards another school.

Continued...

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