How much do sneakers matter in basketball recruiting?

You may have heard that Georgia Tech will be switching apparel providers after June 2018 from Russell Athletic to Adidas, Nike or Under Armour. The strong sentiment is that the change will help recruiting, but a difficult question to tease out is how much of a help it will be, and if there is one particular brand that would help the most.

In grassroots basketball circles, it's understood that what AAU team a recruit plays for has some influence on where he will play in college. Josh Pastner and several Yellow Jackets targets shared their thoughts on the matter.

The choices of the top prospects from the 2016 signing class were also analyzed for the degree to which the brand affiliation of AAU team influenced college selection.