Kansas basketball head coach Bill Self has turned players from underrecruited prospects into All-Americans, National Players of the Year, and NBA players. Frank Mason was initially supposed to go to Towson, and Devonte Graham was slated to attend Appalachian State before coming to KU.
Locally, Self has seen things in players like Tyrel Reed, Ochai Agbagi, and Christian Braun that others didn't, and he turned them into terrific players. He's grabbed in-state talent like Perry Ellis and Gradey Dick and helped them become stars.
Keaton Wagler, who played his high school ball at Shawnee Mission Northwest and was the Kansas Gatorade Player of the Year last season, yet didn't receive an offer from Self and KU.
How did Bill Self miss out on a talented player like Keaton Wagler?
There are so many recruits each year that coaches can see all of them, and the competition for their services is high. Still, chances are that the KU coaching staff had a chance to evaluate Wagler because of his proximity and didn't think he was KU material. It is also possible Self did recruit him and Wagler wasn't interested.
Recruiting services can miss the mark too. Rivals rated him 253rd in his class nationally, though 247Sports liked him enough to rank him 152nd.
Self wasn't the only coach to miss out on Wagler, who received only two offers from two power conferences. Only Minnesota and Illinois offered him a scholarship among the power conference schools.
Wagler is proving he was undervalued as a prospect and that the measurements used by recruiting services can be imperfect. He's averaging 14.7 points a game, 5.2 rebounds, 2.6 assists, and 30.4 minutes through 10 games. That is a pretty full stat sheet.
On Tuesday, he dropped a career-high 23 points on Ohio State, sparked by hitting three of his five attempts from three-point land. He's had two other games with eight rebounds, and he's produced 5 assists in each of his last two outings.
On Wednesday, the Field of 68: After Dark podcast declared Wagler the "most underrated freshman" in the country. That is saying a lot. This class features a bevy of talented first-players, like Darryn Peterson (Kansas), Cam Boozer (Duke), Caleb Wilson (UNC), and AJ Dybantsa (BYU), among several others. Keaton Wagler is moving his name up into that list.
After all the success Self has had with talented local kids, it seems improbable that he missed out on Wagler, but it appears he let this one get away. He looks like he would have been a perfect fit with the current roster, which isn't always obvious during the recruiting season.
It would be interesting to see if the Jayhawks recruited Wagler at all or if they never had interest. He might be a player Self wishes he'd looked at harder during recruitment.