There were
some recent posts about significant Illinois talent going out of state which really got me thinking about Chicago connections and recruiting. We lost O'Mara to Xavier and McCloud to Murray State-- it was nice to see we were significantly in the mix, at least.
During the first few rounds of the tournament I was noticing how many players they mentioned on out of state teams (because there were no Illinois schools in the tournament) who were from Chicago or the suburbs. During the Cal Poly-Wichita State game, they mentioned that Cal Poly's top player was from Walter Payton Prep in Chicago, initially attended Rice, and transferred. Wisconsin's 7-footer Frank Kaminsky played for Benet, his father played at Lewis (graduated year before Whitesell got there), and his mother played VB at Northwestern-- plus there are two other Chicago area players on Wisconsin's roster. Two starters at St. Louis were from Chicago, of course Duke's Jabari Parker, two major players for Western Michigan, Blackshear from Louisville, etc., etc., etc.
I don't know that the AD has any effect on recruiting per se, but he/she would definitely have an effect on moves that would make us a higher-profile, more viable option for Chicago area and Illinois kids to invest their athletic future at Loyola. The next AD could help with vastly improved marketing, doing what's necessary to improve scheduling (helping to put together a home MTE, for instance), and improving attendance/gameday environment/student support. Given the problems at DePaul, Northwestern, UIC, and other state schools, there's a real opportunity for Loyola to forcefully step into this breach, and the AD can lead a lot of it.