Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

San Diego State commit discusses negative recruiting

Steve Fisher

Steve Fisher

AP

There’s no denying that negative recruiting occurs in college basketball, with some taking the approach of convincing recruits what another school lacks while also selling their own program’s positives. And when the possibility of an NCAA investigation comes into play, chances of negative recruiting taking place increase a great deal.

Just days after it was reported that the NCAA could be looking into possible rules violations at San Diego State, the Mountain West program is already having to battle against negative recruiting.

In a story written by Mark Zeigler of the San Diego Union-Tribune, recent SDSU commit Jalen McDaniels discussed what’s changed in his recruitment since the reports of a possible NCAA investigation surfaced. McDaniels, who hails from Federal Way, Washington, remains a firm San Diego State commit and he took to Twitter to make this clear on Tuesday.

The text was from a Pac-12 program. It was a screen shot of the story outlining the allegations.

“They were like, ‘It’s gonna get crazy,’ ” McDaniels said. “I was like, ‘No, it’s not.’ ”

Oral commitments are not binding. Only national letters of intent are, and high school seniors can’t sign them until early November. In the meantime, McDaniels continues to stand by his new family.

“10 toes down out here #Aztecs,” he tweeted before he went to bed Tuesday night.

“It was just showing that I’m loyal to the program,” he explained. “I chose the school for a reason. I’m not going anywhere.”


Given how long SDSU head coach Steve Fisher and his staff have been in charge, this likely isn’t the first time that they’ve had to deal with this scenario. However the unpredictability of this current situation, beginning with the question of whether or not the NCAA will make a formal inquiry, can make dealing with negative recruiting a bit more difficult.

The best the staff can do right now is keep their commitments and recruits up to date on the developments consistently, thus limiting the impact that the “rumor mill” can have in such situations. And with San Diego State in the running for talented players such as T.J. Leaf, M.J. Cage and Trevor Stanback (all 2016), this becomes an important move for the coaching staff.