NC State Assistant Coach Lee Pritts
Earlier this month D1CW released it's recruiting rankings for the 2010-11 season, and the NC State Wolfpack were prominently featured with a #7 overall ranking. Instrumental in the ranking is Assistant Coach Lee Pritts, who just finished his first season coaching in Raleigh. Pritts has helped recruit top classes into Missouri and Old Dominion before coming to NC State. This week, D1CW got a chance to pick Coach Pritts' brain about all things NC State recruiting.
D1CW: Coach in case anyone is not familiar with your recruiting class, can you fill us in?
Lee Pritts: It's kind of crazy, I was just talking to an administrator about this the other day. You can have a class full of 4x State Champions with 4.0 GPA's, but that doesn't mean that they will end up better in the classroom and on the mat than a bunch of guys who ended up 3rd in their states' but are determined to succeed. I can say that we have a group of recruits who are driven to succeed academically and athletically. There were a few talented guys that we were recruiting that we didn't end up signing because we didn't think that they had the right mindset.
As far as individuals, the standouts are 4x Ohio State Champion Chris Phillips. Colt Fought, a Senior National Champion, and Henry Carlson a 4x State Champ who placed at the Beast of the East, Ironman and was a National Finalist at one point. These guys have all had success prior to coming here and are extremely driven.
D1CW: This recruiting class features signee's from all over the country, most notably Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Have you made it a point to focus on those areas, or any other area in particular?
LP: Not necessarily. Yeah, we've got guys from all over the place, Kansas, Florida and of course North Carolina. I don't care where our recruits wrestled in high school. What is most important to us is that they wrestled a national schedule. I understand that some states don't allow wrestlers to travel out of state, but we'd like to see them wrestle at Fargo, some of the Regionals or even Disney Duals. Anything to get that national level competition. If they haven't had that type of competition, they usually will have a bigger learning curve.
D1CW: Can you name a characteristic or two that you look for when evaluating a potential recruit?
LP: Before you get to know them, of course you want to watch them wrestle and see what kind of talent they have. What I want to see is someone who wrestles hard no matter what the score, up by 10 or down by 10, still trying to score. I like to watch the warm up's too. I want to see someone who just can't wait to get on the mat and compete.
Whenever I do camps I'll have kids come up to me and ask, "How many State Title's do I need to win to get recruited"? There really isn't a right answer. The results in high school are important, but it's not the be all-end all. We want wrestlers who have goals and are driven. We are confident that the coaching staff can fine tune technique, but we can't teach the drive to succeed.
D1CW: Has it been difficult recruiting at NC State considering the success the other ACC school's have had lately? This year's D1CW rankings feature 3 ACC teams in the Top 10 and 5 in the top 25....
LP: No, I think it's beautiful!!! At the end of the day it helps us.
13 years ago, I started coaching at Missouri and we were bad. Bart Horton and I were both first-year coaches and we didn't have much of a clue about how to recruit. Coach Smith did a great job of breaking us in. What we were selling was coming into the Big 12 to compete, more so than even coming to Missouri. The ability to compete against the best teams in the country got kids excited. This is kind of a similar situation.
I don't want to say it's easier, but it is a positive for us. A strong conference is a huge bonus. There has been a commitment from all of the schools to their respective wrestling programs. I really love it, I'd love to see a bunch of ACC schools in the top 10 in the nation. Competition like that is how great rivalries are built.
D1CW: Does the NC State staff have a philosophy on redshirting? Some teams generally redshirt every freshman, others have the best wrestler on the mat regardless of age...
LP: We have told all of our guys to be ready to go when they signed with us. In the end, we're going to do the best thing for each of our athletes. Truthfully, we are not winning a National Title next year, so we need to do the best for each individual person. Some may be ready, some may not. And that isn't a knock on anyone who redshirts. I remember when Ben Askren was a freshman, he came into Missouri as a big-time recruit. However, I'm not sure if he would have been the wrestler he ended up being, if he wouldn't have redshirted that first year. He spent that entire first year training like a madman, he worked his tail off and ended up as a 4x finalist. On the other hand, there are some kids who you can lose if they redshirt. Those kids don't feel like they're part of the team, not competing that first year.
D1CW: Last year, NC State got a new athletic director Debbie Yow. How has she impacted the team and it's recruiting efforts?
LP: The biggest thing is that she increased the operating budget within two weeks of taking over. That allowed us to expand our recruiting efforts immediately. We were able to get into more homes than ever, which is what you must do if you want to get the top guys. Prior to that, the recruiting budget was very limited and we could get into only a few homes. Now we can do that and get to all of the big tournaments.
The money is important. You need to get in the houses to meet parents face-to-face. It's understandable, if you're going to send your kid off to school for 4 or 5 years you want to get to know that coach and you want to have a feeling that they will be well supported at their school. It's not only us, all of the sports at NC State have gotten full support.
D1CW: If I were a recruit considering NC State, what would set your program apart from any others that may being recruiting me?
LP: It's the personal relationships we build. Around the country, most schools recruit based on their facilities, academics and coaching staff. At the end of the day, we have all of that too. I don't think people realize how high our academic standards are. I don't think that they have been promoted very well. What separates us front other schools are the relationships we have forged with our athletes. We really have a family atmosphere, the wrestlers play with my kids like they are older brothers. A lot of schools try to create something like that, but we have it here.
D1CW: Great Coach, Thanks!
LP: You didn't expect that last answer, did you?
D1CW: Not really, but it's good. Thanks Coach!
LP: You got it brother!!