College basketball recruiting in 2016 includes players, coaches, scouts and social media

MEQUON -- When it comes to college basketball, there has always been interest in the recruiting process, and which players may be coming in to help the team. Nowadays, fans have a much more informed view on who those prospects are.

NY2LA Summer Jam

The NY2LA Summer Jam has grown in popularity and certainly, stature over the past decade. Many of the top high school basketball players in the country come together under one roof at Homestead High School along with some interested observers.

Evan Daniels

"The best part is there's players here. I'm not coming here unless there's players here," Evan Daniels said.

Daniels is the director of basketball recruiting for Scout.com.

"Then there's the part of the job where I'm covering the recruitments and trying to figure out where they're going to school and writing stories about them and not only covering their development, but also, their recruitment to where they are going to end up in college. Without the college recruitments, I don't really have a job. That's where this excitement comes from and that's why our website has gotten so popular. The fans of these particular schools want to figure out who's next," Daniels said.

Scout.com

Besides the platform of the Scout.com website, Daniels has more than 65,000 Twitter followers himself.

The explosion of social media runs right alongside the growth of events like the Summer Jam, and the fan interest in these prospects shows no signs of abating.

Evan Daniels

"Not only can they watch the kids on the highlight reels or Scout or YouTube, or they can read the stories, now they can follow them on Twitter. They can follow them on Instagram. It's a lot more personal," Daniels said.

In today's recruiting world, fans want to know about players, but let's face it, there's another key component in all this -- college coaches.

"If Steve Wojciechowski or Greg Gard are in a gym, somebody tweets about it, everybody knows," Daniels said.

The college coaches in the gym at the Summer Jam want the players to know where they are from. On the first day and night of this year's event, more than 500 coaches were in attendance.

NY2LA Summer Jam

Incidentally, Daniels is aware of passion for sports from another perspective. He is friends with Packers wide receiver Randall Cobb.

"We kind of got to be buddies through acquaintances. I've actually been to a game at Lambeau each of the last five years, so I always come up and watch him play and -- awesome guy. He's a good dude," Daniels said.

NY2LA Summer Jam

Daniels will tell you he's living a good life -- popping around the country to watch basketball, talk basketball and communicate what he's learned to big basketball fans.