When it comes to judging a high school kid's character, talk to the custodian

Earlier this week, on National Signing Day, high school seniors all over the U.S. announced where they'd be playing college football.

If you've ever been curious how college staffs evaluate a player's character, West Virginia football coach Bill Stewart provided some insight when he was asked about it recently:

"Two of the best people I talk to when I go recruiting are one, the school custodian, and number two, the school cook, and that will never change. I find the custodian and I find the school cook. How do they ask when they ask for seconds? Do they say please and thank you? That weighs heavy on me. Maybe that doesn’t way heavy on some coaches but that weighs heavy on this staff and these coaches."

You win championships by pushing the ball

Interesting story today's Wall Street Journal titled "Why Carolina Owns College Hoops." It begins with this paragraph:

There are 343 colleges playing Division I basketball. They're spread all over the map -- 24 in California, 13 in Louisiana, at least one in every state save Alaska. And yet, three of the very best hail from the same narrow strip of North Carolina tobacco country. Duke, North Carolina and Wake Forest, which are all currently ranked in the nation's top seven, are located in Durham, Chapel Hill and Winston-Salem, respectively. Their campuses are so close together that a determined person could visit them all in a single day -- by bicycle.

According to the author, "There isn't a remotely comparable cluster of excellence anywhere else in American sports." He contends that "what has helped the Carolina schools excel this season is a common culture of innovation -- in this case, a warp-speed style of play."

At a time when most college teams are working the floor at a snail's pace (game speed, measured by total possessions per game, dropped to its lowest level in a decade in 2006 and has stayed flat since then), Tobacco Road looks more like the autobahn. Wake Forest and North Carolina are among the nation's 10 fastest teams in possessions per game. Duke isn't in as big of a hurry but still ranks in the top third nationally. Although Duke looked sloppy in a road loss to Clemson this week, the Blue Devils blew the doors off poor Maryland last month, running up a 40-point lead in 25 minutes.

Wake's Dino Gaudio (pictured above) says he doesn't "believe in walking the ball up the floor." In his words:

"From an offensive perspective, you win championships by pushing the ball up the floor and getting cheap baskets."

Influenced by Mike D'Antoni's success with the Suns, programs like Wake, Duke, and UNC are "part of a gradually increasing group of major-conference teams including Missouri and Washington [that] are winning by running opponents out of the gym."

In an effort to attract attention of NBA scouts, more and more college players are looking for programs with "the right environment for them to showcase their skills right away."

For the Carolina schools, the fast-paced, high-scoring systems they've adopted have helped make them more attractive to recruits who want a chance to stand out. "That's a recruiting advantage," says Jerry Meyer, national recruiting analyst for Rivals.com. "The coaches that can legitimately say 'we're going to be in the top 10 in scoring,' and that 'you're not going to have handcuffs on you,' that's what players want to hear today."

Trading glitz and glamour for productivity

A unique part of the Butler's basketball program are the early-morning workouts, which the players contend give them an edge:

"We do this all the time, every day," junior forward Willie Veasley said. "I think you get more focused when you wake up and everything is so fresh. It's gotten us to where we are now, and it's probably real different from what other programs do."

As this article points out, the No. 13 "Bulldogs have appeared in five NCAA tournaments since 2000 and reached the regional semifinals twice in the last six years. Over the past three seasons, they've won more games than any other Division I school in Indiana and have been ranked for 40 weeks since 2006."

This season, Butler's starting lineup features "three freshmen and a sophomore" and is led by "the nation's third-youngest coach, 32-year-old Brad Stevens."

And here they are, winners of 19 of their first 20 games.

According to this article:

Butler's old-school strategy favors teamwork over experience. Players share the basketball, take pride in defending opponents, prefer crediting teammates to gloating about their own accomplishments and they don't deviate from the system. Simply put, it's all about desire, determination and execution.

Part of Butler's recipe for success is that the team's "coaches look for distinctive traits in recruits — like maturity and teamwork — that other schools often overlook. At Butler, they're essential."

"We spend a lot of time talking to their high school coaches and the coaches around them. That gives you better insight into them," Coach Stevens said. "But I think if you watched how they interacted with their teammates on and off the court, you'd see we really didn't have to do a lot of research. It starts with the makeup of the kids on this team — their selflessness and their belief in being a great teammate."

The author contends that "when the freshmen arrive in Indy, they've already agreed to trade glitz and glamour, even dunks, for productivity. The Bulldogs also keep things in perspective. They focus on making the most of what they have, not complaining about what they don't have — bigger post players, highly ranked recruiting classes or sparkling new facilities."

"We're not aiming to be someone else," Coach Stevens said. "I think a lot of programs do things really well and when you watch them on tape, you may take something and try some things that might work for your program. But we are Butler, and we're just trying to be the best Butler team we can be."

If you don't like the score, either recruit harder or coach better

In his autobiograby "Wins, Losses, and Lessons," Lou Holtz recalls a terrific exchange between he and Bobby Bowden while Coach Holtz was at William & Mary and Coach Bowden was at West Virginia.

The coaches were friends, but you wouldn't have known it when their teams played each other.

"That afternoon, Bobby kept in his two star running backs long after the game had been decided. The score was lopsided (43-7), but the West Virginia starters stayed in the game until the bitter end.

Afterward I said, 'Bobby, why did you do that? We're friends?'

He looked me straight in the eye and said, 'It's your job to keep the score down, not mine. If you don't like the score, either recruit harder or coach better. I've got to coach my team, and you've got to coach yours. You can coach only one team.'

That stung, in part because I knew he was right. If I wanted to keep from being embarrassed, I needed to do a better job recruiting, a better job preparing, and a better job coaching."