Limit the exposure which would most likely limit value on the open market. I have a coaching buddy who has taken a somewhat unusual position his entire coaching career where prospects are concerned. Once he locked onto a prospect he loved or perhaps unearthed, he would pull like crazy for the player to lay a complete egg any time the prospect played during an open evaluation period in front of college coaches. He sincerely wanted the player to not just not play well, but he wanted the player to be awful. Has never strayed from that position to this day. In fact, Virginia Tech signed a player some time ago under very similar circumstances and that was Coleman Collins. He played on a fairly low hanging fruit team based in Atlanta, coached by Benjamin Miller. Tech had been given a heads up on Coleman by a scout they trusted and Mark Cline had gone out and watched Coleman in a very small AAU event. Then, during an open Tournament in July, Coleman played with this Atlanta All Stars team, Benjamin’s team. Coach Stokes was seeing Coleman for the first time at this event and I remember being there. I watched all of Coleman’s three games at this event. Scores of coaches in attendance, Calipari, Coach K. The word had gotten out and he was a secret no longer. It was in fact an overflow crowd and I would guess 90-95 % of the coaches in attendance were there to see this late blossoming, totally unknown Big. Coleman wasn’t even in the top 500 of any online scouting entity. None. He was a genuinely, completely unknown prospect at the time of this July event. The good thing is Coleman played poorly, very poorly in fact in game 1. In his second game he played a little better but still not very well. The number of coaches had significantly dwindled in game 2 due to his game 1 performance. In fact, I recall Calipari getting up and leaving at the end of the 3rd Q in game 1. By game 3, wasn’t very many coaches at all. But it then was a good news/bad news situation. Competition had been understandably scared off by Coleman’s poor performances and that was a good thing for Tech. But the bad news was Coach Stokes had never seen Coleman before and he was unimpressed. Also understandably. He was not at all ready to offer Coleman. In fact, I thought we wouldn’t offer because Coach Stokes just hadn’t seen enough to merit an offer. Coleman’s offers to that point had been small schools, mostly all low D-1 schools. But Mark Cline was dogged in convincing Ricky to trust him and we had to offer before bigger schools would go watch his workouts post-July and would eventually see the talent Coleman possessed and they would offer. And Cline was able to do so, Ricky trusted his assistant coach and Tech locked him down in August and Coleman visited in early September just to clinch things and it was over. Ricky was quite reluctant but Cline just persisted and persisted and fortunately for Tech wore him down eventually and the story ended happily. ** Edited by Rev.Zeke Vodka at 11/6/2025, 12:52:02 PM