"Trying to drum up interest in recruiting is extremely difficult, unless you come upon a need."
We may be approaching "The chicken and the egg" territory here, but that's sort of the point to me. We're talking about schools over-recruiting in part because they're losing players for whatever reason; so if a program loses a guy and feels "the need" to replace him, as PG Staff says, they may indeed have a list of prospects to go to. But that doesn't preclude that chance that the player they turn to would be someone who had reached out and expressed an interest in them.
I understand that Vandy probably isn't going to jump right on someone who reaches out to them out of the blue, but I would have to believe there are plenty of schools, perhaps one in the Midwest, that would respond to a really good player from the West, if they knew he was out there. Even for some really, really good programs, I see nothing wrong with with trying to get on the radar screen...