Weis says KU can attract recruits

Last recruiting season the Kansas coaches had to scramble for a month to fill their class. By the time Weis completed his staff they hit the ground running the first week of January. They had to find 17 recruits to fill their class and not much time.

Going into the 2013 class they have a full staff and recruiting territories in place.

"We are worlds ahead of where we were last year," said head coach Charlie Weis.

Due to NCAA rules Weis can't comment on specific recruits. On Sunday Samson Faifili and Mark Thomas confirmed to Jayhawk Slant they committed to Weis over the weekend. That brings the known number of commitments to 13.

The class is on pace to have a good mix of high school and junior college recruits. That has been a plan of Weis and his staff all along.

"First of all I totally believe you need both," Weis said. "You need to bring in high school and junior college kids. The thing is with junior college kids they are there for a reason. It wasn't because they wanted to go to junior college. So you have to do a lot of due diligence. It can't just be whether a guy can play. You have to make sure when you bring them in you feel confident not only will he buy into the program. You want to make sure he will walk out of here in a couple years with a degree from the University of Kansas."

It is easy to wonder how the staff can be close to halfway full of filling their class in mid November. After all a 1-10 record is something you have to sell to recruits. But that's not always the case in recruiting.

"You can take a game like last night (Iowa State) and in recruiting you can turn that into a positive," Weis said. "With the guys who are here you can say 'okay do you think you could play in that spot, do you think you can help us.' When they see visual evidence and they can picture themselves out there ahead of the other guys, sometimes that plays to your advantage."

The state of Kansas usually produces 7-10 BCS level recruits depending on the year. Weis has stated in the past their first goal is to recruit Kansas and the Kansas City metropolitan area. The next area are ones that are drivable that would include places like Texas and Chicago.

"Unless a kid is from Kansas and always wanted to go from Kansas the top players aren't sitting there and putting Kansas on my list every year," Weis said. "So how do you get the top players or players that you can compete in the Big 12 with? What you do is develop the guys that do want to come here. Then you get guys who were good enough to play anywhere but are in junior college, that want to go somewhere that gives them a chance to get on the field the quickest."