Georgia Tech coach Josh Pastner didn’t know exactly how many prospects have come to campus for unofficial visits in the four months since he has been hired.
“It’s a lot,” he said.
Included in the stream of visitors were 10 to 12 rising eighth-graders, Pastner said, boys who won’t enroll in college until 2021. Recognized in coaching circles for his unending recruiting drive, Pastner said he used the same practice at Memphis and as an assistant at Arizona.
“We want to get people regardless of how young, because when people come to campus, they fall in love with Georgia Tech, with the people, with professors, the academics and the surrounding area of the entire campus,” he said. “It’s powerful when we can get them right there on campus. To me, age doesn’t matter.”
Pastner said he finds out about middle-school prospects through various sources, including AAU coaches and scouting services. Sometimes a coach calls him to tell him about a player that he should meet. He said the eighth-graders were mostly from the metro Atlanta area.
“You’ve got to look under every rock and tree and stone there is to find the players,” Pastner said.
The strategy is to develop relationships early and expose prospects to Tech. Perhaps the most notable success among players Pastner began pursuing as an eighth-grader, he said, was former Arizona star Chase Budinger, now a seven-year NBA veteran. He did something right. In seven years as head coach at Memphis, he signed several prospects who were ranked in the top 100 of their class by ESPN.
“I believe in getting on ’em early, and then you just got to stay on ’em,” he said.
Eighth grade isn’t even close to the earliest he’s opened recruiting.
“I’ve offered guys in the womb because the dad’s seven feet and the mom’s six feet,” Pastner said.
He insisted he was serious.
“I’m like, we’ve got to get on this kid,” he said.
Pastner recognized that it may look a little unusual from an outside perspective to entertain an eighth grader on a college campus. On the other hand, he asked, “what other line of work (is there) where a 38-year-old can be texting a 16-year-old at 10 at night and it’s considered normal?”
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