http://www.roanoke.com/sports/columns_and_blogs/blogs/andy_bitter_virgin...
This was a great research effort by Andy and Co. at the Roanoke Times. Goes pretty in depth about recruiting classes and has some great quotes from Fuente.
It's an approach new Hokies coach Justin Fuente looks like he'll carry on.
"I believe the closer people are, with a few exceptions — sometimes you have connections at some places — but in general the closer people are, the more you know about them, which goes back to your evaluation," Fuente said. "You have a tendency of doing a better job evaluating guys the closer that they are to you. Know more about them.
Fuente's opinion about his role in Virginia.
"We have an obligation, first of all, as college coaches to service the high schools — through clinics, through counseling, through whatever we can do, bringing them to practice," Fuente said. "Whatever we can do so those coaches can continue to develop and coach better. And we can learn from them as well. But to me, that's the first obligation in the state.
"The second obligation is to evaluate the players in the state of Virginia, and then try and recruit the ones that we feel like fit in our program."
Finally his philosophy on getting the top in state talent.
The familiarity comes into play most with evaluation, which Fuente thinks is paramount in recruiting. Fuente estimates that of the consensus top-10 players in Virginia by recruiting websites, the Hokies are targeting about six, which is where the major battles lie.
"There's probably four of those guys that we don't want," Fuente said. "Not because they're not talented. Throughout our evaluation, we determined those are not the type of guys that fit at Virginia Tech. So now you're down to six that you're really fighting everybody for. You know what I mean? I think the number is smaller than it's perceived. ...
"When you sign a guy and everybody is excited about him on signing day, and he's no longer with the team in two years, you did not do your program any good. And sometimes we take risks on those guys. But trying to find a guy that's going to be a ball player in four years, or three years, in addition to the few guys who are immediate, walk-on-campus impact guys — which are fairly rare — is kind of the crux of it."
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