America East Best Practices: Albany Gives Recruits an Honest Take on the system

This blog is all about inspiration. We're going to spending 3 days elevating best practices from the squads that make up the America East Conference. You can tune in on this blog, or you can follow along on Facebook (here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.

First, we analyzed the Vermont Athletics Flickr Channel (here).

Let's move.

After hitting the Albany athletics website, here, I went into the men's basketball page (linked here, shown below).



You'll notice the callout at the bottom of the page for Coach Will Brown.com, I clicked in (here)


We are hit right from the start, with what amounts to a mission statement. "The intentions are for this site to give you insight into the University of Albany, our basketball program, and beliefs...We can offer the student athlete the opportunity to receive a top notch education, play a very good level of NCAA D1 Basketball, and go to school in a great college city. " Talk about setting the stage. It's super clear what you are about to dive into, immediately. How many of us do this on our blogs, our emails, or really any communication? Fantastic.



Diving in, I want to call your attention to a couple of areas. So simple, but so direct in communication. First, "Recruiting." (let's start where the prospective student athlete starts!) Click in and you see that we are hit with beautiful simplicity: 10 things we look for in a player. To see that they don't get caught up in positions and that they want kids who "want a degree" tells me a lot about their style of play. And, as a potential recruit, we see right away if our values align with the coaching staff's. If we fit.



Next, I want you to check out "Philosophy". Click in and you see the programs daily philosophy, along with offense, defense, strength training, and individual workout philosophies. It's clear the offense is set up to share the ball and push the break. Defensively, they want to get after you and lead the conference in FG percentage defense. Solid stuff, as this lets you get a look into how Coach Brown approaches days and goal setting. And again you see if you fit in.



In sum, these pieces are strong because they lay out who Albany is as a squad and who they want as a player. This allows recruits to screen themselves out (or raise their hands to join in). It aids in goal setting and in evaluating success. All of this is so simple that most programs could make it happen, yet it's world class in messaging.

Well done!

Tune in tomorrow as we keep moving in the America East! And, don't forget, you can follow along on Facebook (here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.