I sometimes wonder if math suffers from a bit of basketball syndrome. That is, I'm sure there are dozens of potential Muggsy Bogues-esque players out there, but the game's meta continues to drift ever towards who coaches and trainers know how to coach and train, which is tall dudes.

There might be a structural issue if you have a bunch of guys coming in from the technician side, as you say, who almost all get filtered out. You might need remedial classes, a different curriculum progression, something. Or else recruitment standards/expectation-setting are wacked-out.