UTEP recruits a whole lot more kids from California than it recruits from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida or any other CUSA state outside of Texas. But now UTEP is no longer in a conference that has any California schools, so as a result UTEP no longer plays games in it's second biggest recruiting state(California). This certainly has not helped our recruiting during the past 10 years.
The most success during the Price era came at the beginning, in which he won with a roster that was mostly recruited in a time when we were still in a conference with the California schools. Jordan Palmer, Tyler Ebell, Jayson Boyd, Marcus Thomas(AZ), Jeremy Jones, Joe Fleskoski, Oniel Cousins, etc. were all western kids, that when we recruited them, we used to tell them that they would play close to home once or twice a year. We can no longer say that. In basketball we have only made one NCAA Tournament in the 13 years since we were in a conference with the California schools. Maybe those declining results are just a coincidence? Don't get me wrong, I am in no way saying that this is the sole reason for our slide, but it might be a contributing issue to go with our other internal problems and getting us out of CUSA could be one piece to the puzzle, of us getting our Program turned around.
The MWC has 3 California schools in it and the MWC also has a number of other schools that are closer to El Paso than the closest CUSA school.
LaserCoog is correct in that the move to MWC would not have solely solved our program's poor performance. I also agree that we should take control and take a proactive approach as he mentions. But I do also feel that being in CUSA has had some contribution(even if it is small) to our recent demise. It's true that we have not won in CUSA, but I think it is also fair to say that it is just not a good fit for us and not being in a optimum situation can sometimes have an impact on your results.
