Roy Williams won his 799th college basketball game on the afternoon of Jan. 14. North Carolina's Hall of Fame coach didn't celebrate long, instead hustling to a plane so that he could watch a high school sophomore play that night.
Williams flew to Minnesota, arriving in Rochester shortly after tipoff to scout heralded John Marshall sophomore Matthew Hurt, who scored 39 points in a victory.
"It speaks volumes, the message that that conveys," said Hurt's father, Richard.
That scene underscored another message: Basketball in Minnesota has exploded among boys and girls the past two decades. No longer producing just an occasional coveted big-time college player, the state has become fertile recruiting territory.
Veteran followers of the sport credit the growth of AAU basketball since its inception here in the late 1980s for opening doors for kids to play year-round and gain more exposure.
The talent uptick has been especially pronounced in recent years. In 2014, Minnesota produced three McDonald's All-Americas _ Tyus Jones, Reid Travis and Rashad Vaughn _ that started an unprecedented run of blue-chip talent.
Five high school seniors this year signed scholarships with major conference teams. That doesn't include former Apple Valley star Gary Trent Jr., a Duke signee whose talent allowed him to transfer last summer to a basketball-focused California prep school.
Including Trent, the state had a five-star player in every high school grade for the first time: Trent, one of the nation's top shooting guards; Apple Valley junior Tre Jones, set to be one of the nation's top point guards next season; Hurt, rated a top-10 sophomore nationally; and Minnehaha Academy point guard Jalen Suggs, regarded as one of the nation's top freshmen.
In all, 23 seniors were offered Division I scholarships, according to recruiting analyst Ryan James, who also notes that 15 juniors, five sophomores and one freshman hold Division I offers, too.
"You can go to most high school games and find somebody that can play college basketball," James said.
It wasn't that way in the early 1990s, when Dave Thorson recruited players as a Gophers assistant coach under Clem Haskins.
"The way that we looked at it back then, if we had one guy a year that we could recruit that we felt could come in _ not necessarily right away _ but at some point come in and be a player, we were happy with that," said Thorson, who later built the DeLaSalle boys' program into a perennial champion. "There just weren't as many guys to recruit."
Girls' basketball has experienced similar growth. On average, the state produces about 25 Division I players each year, according to Stillwater assistant coach Kevin Anderson, who has tracked recruiting for decades. Dozens more sign Division II scholarships every year.
The Minnesota Fury girls' program co-hosted an AAU tournament in late April that drew 118 college coaches. Hopkins guard Paige Bueckers already has 15 scholarship offers as one of the premier freshmen nationally. The two most recent WNBA drafts featured two locals selected among the top five picks _ Rachel Banham and Nia Coffey.
"When I took the Minnesota job, I had no idea how much of a basketball state it was," Gophers men's coach Richard Pitino said. "I always assumed it was a hockey state, which I know there's a lot of hockey (players). But it's a terrific basketball state. There's great high school basketball here and AAU basketball here."
