MANSFIELD, Texas — Today begins the NCAA's new order toward spring and summer evaluation opportunities for its college basketball coaches, this being the one and only spring evaluation weekend for grassroots/AAU settings.

It's a very different set-up, brought about in the wake of the FBI's work investigating and prosecuting alleged corruption affecting college basketball recruiting.

The calendar now allows just one spring evaluation period for grassroots and AAU as opposed to the frequent two (based on prior calendars) and a considerably scaled back July, down from three evaluation periods to two, the latter of which reserved for NCAA-endorsed camps as opposed to shoe-company events.

Though the stated goal of the reform on the NCAA's part was to shift influence away from the apparel companies at the heart of the game's scandals, coaches want to attend Nike's, adidas' and Under Armour's league-formatted events and so this weekend was left in place and the Peach Jam week in July remained untouched, so they still can.

Though evaluation periods were scaled back in April and July, opportunities overall increase.

With the addition of June recruiting periods for coaches to attend "scholastic" events — the NBA's Top-100 Camp, then high school camps and clinics — there are actually more opportunities for coaches to lay eyes on potential recruits, though at times in different, perhaps less meaningful settings from an evaluation-value perspective.

“The thing I like more than anything is you have your 130 days and you get to use them however you like," Purdue coach Matt Painter said of the NCAA's existing allowance for off-campus recruiting. "If somebody doesn’t want to use them here in the spring, that’s their choice and they can use their days during the year or in the fall.

"Staffs aren’t married to always being out just to be out because you feel like you have to be out just to keep up with the Joneses. You can constructively use your days how you like, because everyone’s in a different situation.”

Coaches are sensitive, though, to not spending too much time away from their teams on their campuses, and that's where some resistance lied when the new calendar was formed.

June has historically been an important month for coaches to be in their offices. It's when their teams return to campus, and most newcomers arrive.

It's also camp month, a revenue stream for college programs, and now for most, an important evaluation opportunity, as many — Purdue included — host team camps for high schools to play in, affording the host proprietary evaluation opportunities and essentially bonus unofficial visits.

Purdue will still host team camps this June, but will move them up to earlier in the month, per Elliot Bloom, the program's director of operations. It will obviously remain to be seen what impact June open periods have on team camp turnout, not just at Purdue, but everywhere.

Painter says he doesn't yet know his staff's plan for the June evaluation period, that he's yet to look into who's playing where, when and against who. Some states aren't even running high school events during the June evaluation periods, those windows running June 13-14, 21-23 and 28-30. The first of those periods covers two of the six days of the NBAPA Top 100 Camp in Charlottesville, Va.

The state of Indiana will offer places for coaches to be, with the Indiana Basketball Coaches Association running its Boys Showcase June 22 and the Charlie Hughes Shootout, a prominent IBCA-endorsed team event, running June 28-30.

Painter says that at this point he doesn't see a system that's necessarily better or worse, just different, and acknowledges that there's no right way when every school in the country has different circumstances, and thus differing wants and needs.

He does think, though, that June will make international recruiting more manageable — the new evaluation periods will cover events relevant to that market also — and does think a positive change was made in the spring in that now coaches will get four days to visit players after seeing them during the evaluation period.

After the evaluation period closes Sunday, coaches get Monday through Thursday to do in-home or school visits or meet with players' high school coaches and assess academic standing.

That's something coaches advocated for.

“It allows you some time that if you see somebody you haven’t seen before or haven’t been to their school, it gives you those four days to where you can follow up, and maybe see 5-10 guys over your entire staff," Painter said. "That was the push — to get those days.”

It's more travel, though.

And now travel is spread out more throughout the calendar year, now that the previously untouched month of June is on the table.

"It’s probably important for us as coaches to make sure you take vacation and have some down time in May and in August when we’re not recruiting," Painter said. "That’s important to not let those times bottle you up, to get some down time to recharge your batteries."

Membership Info: Sign up for GoldandBlack.com now | Why join? | Questions?

Follow GoldandBlack.com: Twitter | Facebook

More: Gold and Black Illustrated/Gold and Black Express | Subscribe to our podcast

Copyright, Boilers, Inc. 2019. All Rights Reserved. Reproducing or using editorial or graphical content, in whole or in part, without permission, is strictly prohibited.