WORCESTER Wolves have changed their recruitment strategy ahead of the new season in a bid to “not waste money” on players.

Since crashing out to Glasgow Rocks in the first round of the British Basketball League play-offs in April, a review has been carried out by Wolves’ bosses.

Managing director Mick Donovan said he was “disappointed” with the way Worcester finished the campaign and vowed to make improvements on and off the court this summer.

Although he was pleased with some of the players’ performances last season, Donovan admitted Wolves needed to do more work before making signings.

“Obviously you get tapes of players and agents always recommend the players quite strongly because that’s what they are supposed to do,” Donovan said.

“But we need to be digging a little bit deeper, so we will be utilising more of our network of contacts to find out more about them.

“There is more to a player than just their statistics, so we are looking at how they train and questioning whether they are going to be good people in the community and whether they get on well with their team-mates.”

American guard Malik Smith lasted just three months at the University of Worcester Area after failing to settle before his countryman Josh Cameron’s contract was ended in February.

Donovan said the two imports’ exits were “good examples” of situations he and head coach Paul James wanted to avoid next season.

“If we had done a bit more research, we might not have been sending players home,” Donovan said.

“We want to know more about them as people. We have done OK in the past as we have brought some good people in but we could do even more research as it is money at the end of the day and you want to make sure you are not wasting it.”

Donovan said contract talks are still ongoing with “some members” of last season’s squad and he revealed they had started negotiations with potential new players.

“The recruitment process is under way,” he said.

“We have targeted players and are speaking to some at the moment, so we hope to be able to make some announcements in the next week or so.”

The 2015-16 campaign saw Wolves finish fourth and reach the semi-finals of the BBL Trophy but Donovan added: “I was disappointed with last season.

“We were hopeful of a top-four finish, which we achieved, but we wanted to win at least one piece of silverware and we didn’t do that.

“Obviously in the last few games we didn’t perform very well as a team, so we have been going through a process where we have looked at how we can improve.”