doreno5 said:
It would be nice to have home grown talent but the reality is there just are not that many high level players in Wyoming high school basketball. Fertig is an exceptional player who chose to stay. Most who have the ability will play elsewhere. James Johnson played at Wake Forest, the guard from Evanston, at Utah State. Bailey stayed because his dad played at UW, he was not that highly regarded as prospect but became a great scorer. Even if all the best players in Wyoming stayed , Uw would be middling at best.
From a numbers perspective, there is no doubt that there are less high school kids in Wyoming than most other states. That reality is not going to change anytime in the near future. However, Wyoming also does a very poor job developing athletes at the high school level. There is a lot of room for improvement there. You already mentioned how Marcus Bailey was not a highly sought after prospect coming out of high school, but developed into an all-MWC performer within just a couple years. Why do you think that is? In my opinion, it is because his potential was never fully developed at the high school level. For basketball specifically, one of the major issues is the lack of access to AAU ball in Wyoming. AAU has a ton of problems, but it still serves as the primary developing grounds for most basketball prospects in the United States. If Wyoming athletes don't have access to that, then the development needs to come from the high school program. UW could do better at leading that charge.
We will never be able to fill an entire roster with a majority of Wyoming high school players and expect to be competitive. But, if we could bring in 1 or 2 players a year that stick around for 4 years, it would be a nice base to build on.