Most college coaches prefer athletes who don’t specialize and play other sports because those other sports develop different skill sets.
Even most of our top players in the Self Era were multi-sport athletes until their senior years of high school amd could’ve played at a high major level in multiple sports.
With KU, Withey and Wilt were volleyball players, Sherron Collins was a WR in football, our African recruits first played soccer, KJ was a lacrosse player.
Withey’s volleyball background is why he was a great shot blocker, KJ’s lacrosse is why he has great hand-eye coordination, soccer is why so many African kids have elite level footwork, those that played football are generally not afraid of contact when driving. I don’t know has a baseball background, but similar to lacrosse, baseball players tend to have great hand-eye coordination as well.
Speaking of all time great players, MJ was a baseball player, LeBron was an elite football player, Kobe and Hakeem Olajuwon were great soccer players as well as kids.
I’d absolutely prefer kids that didn’t specialize in basketball from a young age and would rather have those kids that were 3-4 sport athletes in school because there’s a whole lot of other skills being developed and enhanced that translate very well to basketball that wouldn’t necessarily be developed otherwise.