In reply to: No news means recruiting isn't going well.... posted by Wolfetone
There's a market but obviously not the size of the football market....
Which is why we, outside of a handful of exceptions the past 20 years, operate with limited information, or as you put it, no news.
It is not a financially viable option for the recruiting sites to pay to have someone covering ND hoops like a Duke, UNC, UVA, and any other ACC school, or even ND football is covered.
Nowhere near.
Case in point: Donovan Clingan
Articles written about his recruitment on the network sites: One, by Blue & Gold. No interview, mostly references from other network recruiting sites. I'd expect that from BGI because Lou Somogyi is a big hoops guy, but it still seems to be the bare minimum.
Mike Frank's site, OTOH, has two articles about him specifically, one of which has an interview with his coach about him. They also probably have the most comprehensive who-is-ND-recruiting article for the season. They're also much smaller with a lot fewer resources to bring to bear, so even if they want to cover hoops recruiting closely, they can't afford to.
Irish Illustrated, part of the 247 network, which has better recruiting info in general and plenty of national resources, hasn't written a damn thing about him or any other ND hoops recruit. As evidenced above, there's plenty of info out there, but we haven't heard dick from them.
That makes what, seven of us? Look at the viewership numbers on those streams on the exhibition games in November- the online-only ones where they tell you how many people are watching. I swear at one point I looked over and it was under 100. Now granted, it's a preseason game against the Sisters of the Poor, but if it were UNC, Kansas, etc. there would certainly be thousands watching.
Basketball is still far, far behind football in interest among ND fans. Hell, I'm in an email chain of 25 ND fans to discuss football recruiting, and two of us care about basketball enough to know our starting five. A few others will watch the big games. The rest will tune in at March Madness, maybe.