Since he arrived in Minneapolis, Gophers basketball coach Richard Pitino has been preaching the value of recruiting in-state.
At a place like Minnesota – where there isn't a recent history of success and the weather works against pitches to outsiders – making a strong campaign for the home players is always important.
But in the next two classes of recruits, that philosophy might be as demanding as ever. As much as any time in the last 10 years, the Land of 10,000 Lakes is flooded with solid targets and enough intriguing players to give the Gophers the opportunity to hand all seven of their expected scholarships to locals if they so desire.
"It's pretty good right now," Pitino said of the state of Minnesota basketball. "Recruiting the home state is really important, and I think we've done a really good job … we've got to continue doing that for future classes as well."
Pitino also pointed out that because of Minnesota's relative distance to other major cities and recruiting grounds, finding talent in-state becomes all the more critical.
"If you go to South and North Dakota, they don't traditionally have a lot of players," Pitino said. "I always look at where are players within a four-hour radius of where you live? It's hard to go into other places and get players [when you get] into the Big Ten country and their states. We want to make it hard for other people to do that as well."
Like all collegiate coaches, Pitino cannot talk about specific recruits per NCAA rules, but he said he hopes to land a guard and a big man in a 2017 class that touts Champlin Park duo Theo John (a 6-9 power forward and center) and McKinley Wright (a 6-foot guard).
"I like the flexibility of bigs playing at the 4 or the 5 and for guards, I like them being able to play multiple positions as well," Pitino said. "I think for our roster now, we have that, so we've got to take the best available guard we can get and the best available big we can get."
Both John and Wright would seem to fit those criteria.
For 2018 – when Minnesota has five scholarships to give -- Pitino is painting a wider brush.
"We need to develop a pretty big list," he said. "You've got five scholarships on papers so I think we need to have a bigger board than we normally would and it's got to be all-ranging for every position."
