Pickeral: Some ACC coaches all a-Twitter

Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams is proud of former player Chris Wilcox for signing a new NBA contract. Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg is excited that furniture is being moved into his team's new practice facility. Clemson coach Oliver Purnell recently met with a prospective new strength coach.

How do I know? The same way recruits do: Twitter.

"Tweeting" is the newest mode of communication for coaches and prospects, and it's catching on around the ACC. The social networking site, which can be accessed via Internet browser and cell phone, asks users to answer "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less and posts the responses to a mini-blog that anyone can subscribe to and read.

So far, Williams (whose handle is "MDCoachWillams") leads the ACC head basketball coaches using Twitter with roughly 2,700 followers (and he had tweeted 127 times as of late last week). Greenberg (HeadHokie) is next with almost 1,800 followers and more than 300 tweets, followed by Clemson's Purnell (CoachPurnell) and Florida State's Leonard Hamilton (FSUCoachHam).

None of the head coaches from the ACC's three Triangle schools are consistently tweecruiting -- yet. But the schools' athletics departments are using Twitter to promote the goings-on in the programs, which could help lure prospects when they choose to take a peek.

"I think it is something that will continue to grow," said Boston College assistant coach Mo Cassara, who says he uses his Twitter account (Coach_Cassara) to keep tabs on changing game times and high school news (for those high schools that also have accounts). "With all the technology available, kids are constantly socially networking, and this is just the latest thing."

Under NCAA rules, coaches can't make comments about specific recruits via public tweets. But there is a feature that allows private, user-to-user direct messaging. Considering these messages can be sent directly to cell phones, it seems a lot like text messaging, which the NCAA forbade between coaches and recruits because the prospects were racking up costly bills. But because recruits can choose whether to have tweets sent to their phones, the NCAA considers it like e-mail, which is legal.

Wake Forest assistant coach Rusty LaRue (Rusty_LaRue), who had 98 followers as of the middle of last week, says he rarely uses the direct message function because more recruits still use Facebook (another social networking site) over Twitter.

"But it's a good way to follow some of the scouting guys," he said. "Dave Telep, and some of the guys who run AAU programs, tweet, and when breaking news hits, they put it out. So it's a good way to stay in the loop ... and if a recruit tweets or one of our players tweets, it's a good way to keep up with them, as well."

Not every coach uses Twitter strictly for recruiting, though.

Duke assistant coach Chris Collins (Coach_Collins) said in an e-mail earlier this summer that he found out about Twitter from watching the NBA playoffs. He was curious, checked out the Web site and now has almost 1,400 followers.

"I had no idea how many people were on there tweeting," he said in the e-mail. "I decided to do it to use it as a way to connect with the followers of Duke basketball and give them a feel for what us coaches are up to. I try to use a mix of Duke-related and personal things (kids' activities, NBA playoffs, etc.)."

Collins said he tries to update his page once a day and mostly follows friends, other athletes and people in the entertainment industry.

"I don't use my page with the intent to recruit at all," he said in the e-mail. " I guess coaches could use it by updating their pages with propaganda on their school and bball program if they wished to approach it that way. None of my updates have been used to do any of that. Mine is done strictly for fun."

(Contacat Robbi Pickeral at robbi.pickeral (at) newsobserver.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

column
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.