Utah State basketball: Key to success is knowing how to recruit

SALT LAKE CITY — USU basketball coach Stew Morrill has won 23-plus games in 12 of the 13 years he has been at USU. The only aberration was his first season in Logan, when his team went 15-13.

The key to his success has been knowing how and who to recruit.

"One thing is when I came here 13 years ago, I told them I understand this job. I grew up in this state (Provo)," he said. "Anyone who takes this job needs to understand the nature of the Utah State job and our base. Granted, we can't often — at least in the past — beat BYU and Utah if a player wants to go there, but we get enough solid kids — and not just Utah kids — to give us a base. We get a lot of LDS kids, a lot of times they're returned missionaries, and sometimes just other instate kids."

Last year's Aggies started four native Utahns, this year three.

"Then we're able to mix in the jucos and the common theme is that they're good kids. They have to put up with me and that's not easy."

Morrill said recruiting can be difficult in Logan due to negative recruiting.

"People don't like to hear about these, they think I'm being negative," he continued. "But it's just reality. There are three things that are thrown in our faces: weather, (lack of) minorities and LDS culture. You can count on that negative recruiting from other schools. So recruiting is a complex game... We know we're going to get blasted by negative recruiting in those three areas and we've been really, really lucky on a few guys. You have to get lucky to keep at the level we've done."

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