Any time a state or even a region can combine warm weather with eight or more months of the year then the recipe for hotbed basketball status has been planted.
This is exactly what has happened in the Sunshine State of Florida as this region of the country is now considered the new hotbed for collegiate NCAA basketball recruiting.
Sand in their Sneakers
The old standard-bearers for recruiting in college basketball who have certainly deserved hotbed status have only been slightly-affected by this emergence of the boys and girls who got sand in their shoes and could not shake it from the State of Florida.
There are many reasons for this with the most obvious being that there are so many schools to divide the talent up with. The NCAA is divided into not one but two levels and school-size distinctions that offer a very good and talented high school basketball player multiple recruitment opportunities.
This is only compounded with the availability of the Southern boys from way in the Deep South to grab a ball and head to the nearest park that has a hoop.
Sunny Weather Rusty Hoops
Florida has long been considered the place to be for recruiting of high school football and baseball players. The availability of the warm weather leads to the region being widely-accepted as an all around great hunting grounds for some of the best Blue-chip talent in the United States.
When speaking about high school basketball players it is important to remember that the State of Florida has a long line of great players that have come from the Sunshine State and have made it into the pros and in a big way.
It is not that the State of Florida as a hotbed for collegiate recruiting has just been recently discovered as that is not the case at all.
It is just that the State of Florida has started to challenge in sheer numbers and letters of intent from blue-chip players ranked by the individual sportswriters and head coaches of major universities as a magnet, some of the largest basketball collegiate programs in the United States.
Division I NCAA
To become acclimated to some of the universities and schools that are utilizing the services of the state of Florida for hotbed basketball talent one only has to look at the number of current Florida high school students offered Letters of Intent throughout the United States.
In 2009 the toll number of Division I NCAA high school basketball Florida players that were offered a scholarship to play basketball at a variety of leading institutions in the continental US and abroad stood at 457.
That is up from 397 just a year before. Although citing just sheer numbers does not make for a high school basketball hotbed status for any state or region it does point to the fact that more schools are making the trip down to Sunny Florida to do their NCAA recruiting basketball business.
Warm Weather Good Beaches Good B-Ball Pick-up GamesThe State of Florida offers warm weather as mentioned above and also the availability to pull from a truly eclectic mix of student athletes from a variety of nations all coming into the state to live and raise their families.
This is one of the reasons why collegiate basketball recruiters flock to Florida and not only to see the spring training leagues or the MLB Grapefruit League’s games and baseball players. The Floridian sun and the warm weather tend to make for a fantastic opportunity for these kids to go out and play the sport that they adore, basketball.
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