Recently Gonzaga landed Ryan Edwards out of Montana. Despite his size and strength Edwards was a largely under the radar prospect. he joins Luke Meikle in the 2013 recriuting class. while these players could very well end up being "diamonds in the rough" they are quite a gamble. This leads me to ask the question, "What's going on with recruiting?"

The West Coast is regarded as a second class area for basketball players. While there are certainly good players here, the lists of top prospects are usually littered with east coasters. Recently there has been a surge of good players from the west however. In ESPN's 2013 Top 100 there are 12 players from the West Region of the USA and in ESPN's 2014 Top 60 there are 8 players from out West. The question is why isn't the GU staff pursuing more of those top prospects? Bringing in highly touted players is difficult. It becomes more difficult when they live across the country from Spokane. I'm not saying we should only go after the top guys out West but why not test the waters?

About a month ago the coaching staff offered Robert Hubbs of Tennessee and Karviar Shepherd from Texas. Offering late in their recruiting like that lessens the chances of landing one of those prospects. If you are going to try to get in on a recruit late in the game, why not one that is close to GU? Perhaps they are close enough to take a visit to Spokane. This would greatly increase our odds of landing one of these recruits. Take Antioch, California Power Forward Marcus Lee, for example. He is the 27th best player in 2013 according to ESPN. he obviously hasn't done much narrowing of his list because his list is 18 teams long, with teams like San Diego and Pepperdine on it. Why not throw him an offer and see if he bites?

I'm not trying to say that the staff is doing a bad job (we are involved with some top 2014 prospects) I'm just wondering why the staff isn't taking advantage of the improving West Coast basketball scene. What do you guys think?