In the olden days - before 2018, that is - people in the basketball world used to have a routine.
You’d shoot for the tournament of course, but if you didn’t make it, you’d start working hard on high school players, hoping to land enough talent to compete.
There were schools like Duke and Kentucky that skimmed off the very best players, but you could still get quality young kids and you could usually take a small breather after the tournament.
Things had changed a bit with grad student transfers, because once a player graduated, if he had eligibility left, he could play the next year and that was a nice bonus, if you will.