Tell him he is not cutting it. Look when you are offered a scholly you are expected to be a good player. If your not then you should not be playing. Your not recruited to be on the bench.
It's like everything else in life. If you are not good enough to do something then you have to move on. If you are offered a job and you don't perform they fire you.
That is life. So if a kid has to learn this early then so what. It's major college sports. I am not trying to be a jerk but you have to be capable to play. That is why they dont give every Joe Schmoe a schollarship.
Trust me all of the big coaches do it. Coach K does it. Royboy does it.
So you want it to be a business when it comes to over recruiting. But you want it to be about the Student Athletes as well, they should be students first, be the right kind of kid, etc.
You can't have it both ways.
You can't recruit "The Right Kind of Kid" and say you're "building the program the right way" but when the kid comes to school, does everything in the classroom and on the practice floor your ask of him but isn't quite as good as you thought when you recruited him, run him off so you can sign someone else. That's a little two faced.
And if you aren't recruited to sit on the bench how can you bring in 6 or 7 players a year? We only start 5, there are 13 scholarships what do the other 8 guys do? When was the last time Iowa State had a basketball rotation 13 deep?