Mike DeCourcy

LAS VEGAS - As blossoming Brazilian big man Fab Melo displayed his surprising skills at the adidas Super 64 tournament Wednesday, the stands at Rancho High were loaded with heavyweight college coaches: Bill Self of Kansas, Bob Huggins of West Virginia, John Calipari of Kentucky.

Is it possible all of them were wasting their time? Might they have been just as productive hanging out by the hotel pool or trying to beat the dealer to 21 at the high-stakes blackjack tables?

Maybe Melo will choose one of their colleges. Maybe he won't. But what those coaches have in common—and share with others loaded for pursuit of the 2010 NCAA championship—is that one or more key players on their current rosters were the product of little more than providence.

Consider:

• Championship favorite Kansas will likely start two players who signed letters of intent with other schools, then wound up at KU because of coaching changes elsewhere. Sophomore guard Tyshawn Taylor signed at Marquette but chose the Jayhawks after coach Tom Crean moved to Indiana. Incoming wing Xavier Henry signed at Memphis but will play for Self because Calipari exchanged his Tigers apparel for Kentucky gear.
• Kentucky only wound up with McDonald's All-American center DeMarcus Cousins because of Calipari's move. Cousins committed to attend Memphis last winter but was free to choose another school following the coaching change.
• Guard Scottie Reynolds will be a Villanova senior this year and already made himself a legend in the program with his driving basket to beat Pitt and advance the Wildcats to the 2009 Final Four. But he wouldn't even have played at Nova had not Kelvin Sampson left Oklahoma in 2006, leading Reynolds to seek a release from his letter of intent with the Sooners.
• Forward Damion James has scored 1,306 career points for Texas teams that have won five NCAA Tournament games in three years, after initially signing with Sampson and Oklahoma.
• In a much different way, Sampson also played Santa for West Virginia, which wound up with talented forward Devin Ebanks after Sampson was forced to resign at Indiana. Ebanks is a spectacular talent who could be a breakout star as a sophomore. But he'd committed to IU before Huggins had gotten settled at WVU.

So why did he end up with the Mountaineers?

"My effervescent personality," Huggins said, wryly. "Please put that in bold letters, would you?"

Huggins acknowledges good fortune played a huge role in Ebanks winding up at WVU. If the Mountaineers didn't have an opening when he became available, they might not have been able to take him.

Huggins acknowledges, "You almost want to leave a scholarship open to be ready for what happens in the spring."

A half-dozen years ago, all these coaches would have faced dramatically different circumstances this season. It was extremely uncommon then for a player to be released from a letter of intent because the coach he signed to play for was fired -- or hired by another program.

The letter of intent now has become so easy to escape there is no real disadvantage for prospects to sign in November. A player can get a guaranteed spot at his first choice, stop all the recruiting calls and hassle. And if a coaching change alters the circumstances in a way he does not like, he merely can request a release and go shopping again, in a buyer's market.

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"It's all about opportunity," Self said. "I hate to say this, but you see what coaching changes there are in the spring, and all of a sudden you could be more attractive to somebody. How lucky were we that Tyshawn committed before he took all of his five visits? So now he could visit us in the spring, after we won the championship, and everybody is all fired up."

Sometimes, good luck with such a recruit is the residue of design. The Jayhawks worked to get Taylor in the fall of 2007, did the home visit and all of that, but they held him off while waiting to see if they could fill that position with Willie Warren, a more highly rated prospect. By the time Warren chose Oklahoma, Taylor had already pledged himself to Marquette.

"The harder you work, sometimes, the less productive you are," Self said, chuckling. "It's true. I used to worry about everything. I don't think I worry as much now, because the rules have changed so much."

So what are all of these guys doing out here, getting in and out of sizzling rental cars, fighting Vegas' unyielding traffic and torturing their backs on metal bleachers?

The simple truth is they need to see who can play, and who can't. Because next spring, some of these players almost certainly will be "free agents," and most every college program will have vacancies they hope to fill.

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