Atlantic 10 Best Practices: U Mass and the Recruiting Section

This blog is all about inspiration. We're spending 5 days elevating best practices from the squads that make up the Atlantic 10 You can tune in on this blog, or you can follow along on Facebook (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.

What makes something a best practice? This isn't about the most intricate experience. It's about looking at the world from your consumer's point of view and delivering something that hits it right smack on the head. In the case of colleges, I'm treating the primary consumer as that prospective student athlete.

Thus far we have seen George Washington put faces to skill development (here) and Dayton celebrate success, here.

Let's keep rolling!

Hit the UMass basketball page and scroll down to the bottom. You can kind of see a box for Minute Matters in the bottom center of this image. Don't worry, I'll zoom in for you...

You'll see that UMass lays out content for their three most important groups of consumers: Fans, Recruits, and Alums. We'll go right into the For Recruits box, here.


There is a LOT of information lobbed out here, everything from Compliance and Rules to Directions to Campus or Visitor's Guides to Twitter. But what intrigued me inside this section was the Strength & Conditioning area, which I now dive into...

As you'll note below, this information is extremely deep, but what they do well is specify how they will make you a better athletes. Workouts include a pretty extensive overview.

Program details include speed endurance (designed to help you endure a lack of oxygen), intervals (to improve anaerobic capacity), hill training (for running mechanics and power), speed training (for speed of muscular contraction), and plyometric training (which I hated, but builds strength and footwork). The information is great, as it not just tells you what they do, but why they do it. So many times in life we share what we are doing, but often times it is the why we do it that helps people connect.

How could this be better? I'd love to see this broken out, specifically, for basketball. Give us the picture of what the Hoops team workouts are like and then connect it to the style of play that UMass employs. Would make the workouts not feel like workouts, but more a part of a master plan.

What's up next? Atlantic 10 week continues tomorrow. We will continue unveiling peaks into things I found fantastic across the 14-team Atlantic 10 landscape.

And, don't forget, you can follow along via this blog, or hop over to Facebook (linked here) or on Twitter -- I'm @pawlow34.

Thanks for reading.

Andy

Atlantic 10 Conference Basketball Marketing: 3 Inspiring Things About #10 U Mass

There's something (or things) that every program does a fantastic job of that we can learn from. In anything you do, if you can find the good in what someone does and do more of that and then avoid what you find to be less effective, you'll end up in a better place.

Thus far our journey through the Atlantic 10 has shown us #14 St Joseph's, #13 La Salle, and #12 Saint Louis., and #11 Fordham. Let's keep moving.

#10 U Mass

What the program is known for? I can't think of U Mass and not think of how Coach John Calipari led them to a ridiculous run of 7 NCAA appearances in the 1990s, including a Final 4 appearance in 1996. That's not that long ago. If you look at alums, you zoom right into Marcus Camby and ..... Dr J. Wow.

The Minutemen haven't been back to the dance since 1998, but if you hit their site it should literally ooze of the run they had. If you (prospective recruit) come to U Mass, we can get back there!

Why are they 10th? Coach Kellogg does a solid job on Twitter, giving you a little insight into ways to connect with this year's program. It's even pumped into the site well. But there's a critical piece of the history and what it means to play for this U Mass brand that is missing from this experience.

What inspired me about U Mass? (link here)

1. Local sports report pump into the basketball section.

I love this. There's really no one that covers teams (in terms of real time highlights) than the local news team. And U Mass takes the coverage from local CBS 3 and pumps it right into their basketball site. Nice. Really nice.

Now there's not just TV highlights in the box above - it's packed with press conferences and interviews. But imagine if we were able to expand this. Put all the local coverage here, not just CBS. And what about the midweek coverage and special features on the program that inevitably make the local news... Wow.

2. Coach Kellogg's Twitter feed and pics pump into the basketball section.

As you can see above, U Mass pumps Coach Derek Kellogg's Twitter page into their basketball site. You can check his Twitter page out for yourself, here. With around 850 followers, he does a nice job - likely leading the A-10 in pictures posted from Twitter like the example below.

There's something powerful about having a coach who's active on Twitter and then pumping that Twitter feed into your site. All we need now is more interaction between coach and the fans of the Minutemen.

3. Coach Kellogg's Weekly Recap

This one is tricky. Just about every coach has a weekly show, but not many coaches post the transcript onto their website. The result, as you see above, is essentially a weekly blog by the head coach.

It's very easy to read and digest. And you get a guided look into how Coach Kellogg responds to the ups & downs of the season. I love this.

But now, I ask you this question. If you know you're going to put your transcript of the radio show onto your website, how should that change the radio show? Could this become an internet Q&A that also plays on the radio?

It's an interesting thought. There's many ways to address this. Should you have a predictable theme or featured questions to address? Could you include personal things like favorite websites, videos, or music of the coach... things that show you his personality. Could you promote the show and get fans to ask questions? And could you include photos that accompany you through the coaches show?

Lots of opportunity if we think a little differently.

Click back in tomorrow as we keep moving.

Andy