How Twitter can be utilized for good if monitored effectively.

When Hofstra Pride men’s basketball coach Mo Cassara arrived at the Hempstead, NY University last season following four successful years as an assistant at Boston College, he found that the cupboard wasn’t bare.

Cassara inherited a team led by Charles Jenkins (23.4 ppg), who was drafted by the Golden State Warriors in the second round of the 2011 NBA Draft.  With Jenkins leading the way, the Pride finished Cassara’s first season 21-12 overall and 14-4 in the CAA.

With early success, come great expectations for Cassara and his Hofstra program.  But this is the CAA conference not the ACC.  Replacing one of the CAA’s greatest all-time players in the near future will be difficult for Cassara, but not impossible.

High school All-Americans won’t be walking through the door for any of the programs in the CAA.  The best basketball players in the Colonial Athletic Association are gifted athletes who develop into great players like Charles Jenkins.

In today’s recruiting wars, coaches have to be innovative.  They have to find ways to reach out to potential recruits when they aren’t, by NCAA rules, allowed to have contact with them.

There are basketball programs that will use their web site as a tool for selling recruits on the school, the coach, its players, and the team.  They utilize state of the art video to show practices, press conferences, pep rallies, student life, and anything else that may entice high school players to consider their school.

Coach Cassara has a different approach.  In this day and time, when modern technology advancements seem to focus on who can provide the best cell phone at an affordable price, nearly every potential recruit has multi-media access.

Hofstra Men's Basketball Coach Mo Cassara has embraced Twitter as a means of communicating to potential recruits, the Pride fan base, Hofstra students, and his players.

Cassara has decided to go against the grain, and has opted to embrace the world of Twitter.  “Twitter is a vehicle that has become a major part of our society,” Cassara explained.  “It is a way to reach out to people instantly and communicate.”

For those unfamiliar with Twitter, it is a social based web site that allows individuals, businesses, teams, organizations, etc… to communicate with others who “follow” them.  Followers then have the ability to “re-tweet” the information they receive to others.  It is sort of a communication chain that can reach millions almost instantly.

Each tweet has up to 140 characters to work with, so one has to be fairly precise, sharp, and somewhat creative to relay information effectively.

Utilized properly, Twitter is a great tool to let recruits know what goes on daily.  It can provide for parents of recruits a sense of a coach’s personality, expectations, work ethic, and desire to effectively communicate to those who are part of or follow the program.

There are many coaches who believe Twitter is just another potential problem for their program and ban it completely.

South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier put an end to twitter for his Gamecocks football team during the season because, as he bluntly put it, “Well, we have some dumb, immature players that put crap on their Twitter, and we don’t need that. So the best thing to do is just ban it,” Spurrier said according to a report on GamecockCentral.com.

There will always be individuals who will try to push the envelope or say things because in their mind it’s hilarious or it will somehow make them appear hip.

A football team will have over a hundred individuals with the ability to tweet and spout off.  The Hofstra basketball team has 15 players and several coaches they have to monitor.  It is extra work for Stephen Gorchov, Associate Director of Athletics for Communications at Hofstra who monitors what the coaches and players are tweeting, but at this time the pros of Twitter outweigh the cons.

“We have to get better at it (what is placed on twitter by players and coaches).  Everything doesn’t have to go on Twitter,” Cassara admitted.  “But Twitter is very important to us and is definitely a positive.”

According to Gorchov, Hofstra is in the process of developing a social media policy for all of their student athletes.

You can follow Hofstra Coach Cassara on Twitter @Coach_Cassara or the author of this article CAAZone.com editor/writer Ed Sheahin @NFLSkins