There are too many scholarships for basketball--15 is absurd--and too few for soccer and softball. This should be altered by the NCAA, IMO.
I think managing offers, commitments, scholarship money can be tricky. If coaches make a scholarship offer to a player, then they have to be prepared for the player to accept the offer, and I'm sure they are. There is a difference, of course, between making a scholarship offer and expressing interest in a prospect. Some coaches will tell a prospect they are interested but want to keep watching them play and they might want to make an offer down the road--but can't do so quite yet. That is honest; it simply means the coaches aren't sold on the prospect quite yet and are pursuing other prospects whom they think might be better. You can't assume that you will get a scholarship offer in the future; it might come, it might not, which is why players and their families are wise to keep their options open, too. Coaches must also decide how much to offer individual prospects--a full ride, a half a ride, what? Tricky. A player might like a certain school, but that school offers only half a scholly. Coaches might say, I can definitely offer you half a scholarship--and might be able to raise it in a year or so when we see how things play out. This is my guess--I have no first-hand knowledge. The prospect might be seeking a full scholarship, think she can get it, and so without a full offer from one school will look elsewhere. Fair enough.
I think, too, that some if not most coaches are always recruiting. If a coach has allocated all his/her spots and money for, say, 2018 by now--and then a coveted blue-chip prospect who's been undecided tells the coach she wants to come to his/her school, what does the coach do? In some, if not many cases coaches may leave a spot or two and money available for such a circumstance. If not, they may go back to a previous commitment and tell her that it turns out they don't have a spot, or the scholarship money they'd thought they had for her, after all--in effect, telling her to look elsewhere so that they can grab the better prospect who decided late. That is the dark side of recruiting, I think. I know this happens in football--often late in the process. I think it happens in all sports, but don't know that for a fact, and of course it is bad form to accept a commitment and then renege. I don't think it happens often, however. Given how early kids commit nowadays, a prospect probably has to time to contact other schools and get other offers if it does happen--assuming the other schools have money available. The only thing that binds a coach to an offer is his/her ethical standards--and most coaches have high ethical standards. And of course prospects can change their minds too. Verbal commitments are not binding until the letter is signed. Most coaches and players honor their commitments, but this is a highly competitive business and sometimes things happen.