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Username Post: Recruiting and Ratings
Old Bear
Postdoc
Posts 3988
03-18-17 10:59 AM - Post#227535    

I took a quick look at this years All Ivy First Team and their Rivals Ratings. Stephens, Cook, Weisz and Spieth were all 2*. Interesting, I wonder if anyone has taken a look at the past few years All Ivies and the numbers of 2* versus higher.
mrjames
Professor
Posts 6062
03-18-17 11:22 AM - Post#227539    

I've built an entire model on this and frequently share the results here. It's how I predicted 60 career win shares for the Harvard class. Ratings are weakly predictive on an individual level but much more predictive when aggregated to a team level. Offers are even more predictive, but a very challenged data point to pull.
Silver Maple
Postdoc
Posts 3765
03-18-17 12:01 PM - Post#227543    

And, as has been discussed in the past, ratings seem to be a better predictor of failure than of success.
mrjames
Professor
Posts 6062
03-18-17 12:28 PM - Post#227546    

Not really. It can seem that way through an ex post lens, but the numbers are pretty clear that the success rates are higher at the higher rating levels. This will become more pronounced as the Ivies get players above that consensus 3+ star level that has been a clear break point for quality.
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts 6391
03-18-17 04:21 PM - Post#227566    

I assume what silver maple means is that 1 star or under the radar recruits don't make all-Ivy (i.e., there is a floor below which it is very unusual for a player to be a star). Of course, those recruits are becoming a thing of the past, anyway, which basically means that the 2 star rating lumps together the good 2s of the past along with the old 1/0s.
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts 6391
03-18-17 04:28 PM - Post#227567    

Any chance you can easily post your historical recruit rankings? I couldn't immediately find them, though I know I've seen them plenty of times. Curious where Weisz, for example, ranked. It was pretty clear he was a system fit right from the outset, and I remember some frustration that Penn wasn't more involved with him, but I no longer recall whether he was a guy that people thought would contribute right away.
bradley
PhD Student
Posts 1842
03-18-17 05:24 PM - Post#227568    

I remember that many Tiger fans were very surprised that Weisz started from Day One. He was not a heavily recruited player and there is a Youtube video(s) out there of him in High School and it was not overly impressive.

He is certainly a product of the Tiger system to some degree but he is one of those classic players that ratings do not capture irregardless of the system. Why? The ratings cannot accurately assess how a player sees the Court, instincts or what is the player's heart -- simply impossible to measure. As Coach always says, he is probably the least athletic player on the Tigers roster but so what if you can play.

It is a major over simplification that he is simply a product of the Tiger system. He will probably be a successful coach one day as well.
mrjames
Professor
Posts 6062
03-18-17 10:26 PM - Post#227614    

Will do - want to update it for 2017 kids first. Will try to do so ASAP!
TigerFan
PhD Student
Posts 1871
03-19-17 01:11 PM - Post#227689    

Weisz was rated a 2* recruit, with no rankings by position.

The Verbal Commits site still has a clip of him being interviewed as a high school junior:

http://www.verbalcommits.com/players/spencer-weisz
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts 6391
03-19-17 04:56 PM - Post#227735    

The thing is, though, that when you hear the stuff in recent articles about his recruitment, it certainly sounds like the idea was to play him from day one. So the impression I get is that Princeton thought they were getting a good one, regardless of what everyone else thought.
Tiger69
Postdoc
Posts 2801
03-19-17 05:10 PM - Post#227738    

From the brief part of the interview that I heard, Spencer sounded a lot more realistic and mature than most HS juniors. What his skill set lacked, he made up for in judgement and use of the skills he did have. I suspect that the coaches saw that.
penn nation
Professor
Posts 21081
03-19-17 05:54 PM - Post#227743    

  • TigerFan Said:
Weisz was rated a 2* recruit, with no rankings by position.

The Verbal Commits site still has a clip of him being interviewed as a high school junior:

http://www.verbalcommits.com/players/spencer-weisz



No wonder the AI is all screwed up. I guess starting in 2013 Princeton starting offering scholarships....
Old Bear
Postdoc
Posts 3988
03-19-17 08:11 PM - Post#227749    

I think Ivy the difference between a 2* and a 3* is hard to defend, and may have little to do with how they perform at the D1 level, and may be meaningless. Both, generally, need to improve after HS. How many "raters" have seen a kid from NJ and a kid from So. Cal?
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts 6391
03-19-17 08:26 PM - Post#227756    

Individually there may be plenty of examples of 2 stars who outperform 3 stars, etc. but I think the evidence is clear that the more 3 star recruits you have, the more likely you are to win games at the Ivy level. So I think it matters, and matters a lot.

In general, the 3 star guys will have been recruited by teams outside the Ivy/Patriot. The 2 star guys tend to be more Ivy level recruits, where an Ivy/Patriot is more likely to be there highest level basketball offer.

I also think that we end up not comparing apples to apples sometimes when we talk about stats or even all-Ivy. Every Basketball team Is going to have a leading scorer, etc., and sometimes guys on the weakest teams accumulate the most impressive stats. That doesn't mean they are the best players. So you may have 2 star recruits putting up all conference numbers on a 6th place team. That doesn't mean they actually are better than a 3 star guy scoring 8ppg on a first place Ivy team.




Silver Maple
Postdoc
Posts 3765
03-20-17 10:44 AM - Post#227777    

I think a significant proportion of college success for athletes (I'll bet it's at least 50%) is driven by system fit. And we're talking about fit on both ends of the transaction. More than a few high school athletes play for coaches who really don't know how to use them to their maximum potential (which suppresses their recruiting ratings), and smart athletes choose a college program into which they fit well. I'll bet both of those things apply to Spencer Weisz. Weisz probably deserves a good amount of credit for being intelligent enough to see that Princeton's system was a good fit for him. It's distinctly possible that, had he chosen to go someplace else, he might never have been heard from again.

BTW, I have a suspicion that the same applies to Ryan Betley. While he's clearly a good athlete and basketball player who was probably underrated by the recruiting services, it also looks to me like he's exactly the kind of player Steve Donahue is looking for from the standpoint of both skills and temperament.
mrjames
Professor
Posts 6062
03-20-17 11:23 AM - Post#227780    

The funny thing about recruiting rankings, and why I think they have some predictive ability, is not because I think the scouts hired by these outlets (Scout, Rivals, ESPN, etc.) are able to accurately assess talent in a couple viewings at a showcase. It's because the recruiting rankings are trying to predict likely offers. So, a well-connected analyst for one of these websites sees that a kid is getting strong mid-major offers and when he sees that kid in AAU, he's going to be anchored to a 3-star unless the kid is awful or fantastic. Much the same, if a kid has limited offers from low, low D1 teams, the kid may struggle to even get a rating and surely not one above a 1- or 2-star.

From my observation, offers tend to be better correlated with outcomes on an individual level, so my presumption on why the recruiting ratings have some predictive ability has more to do with the scouts' attempt to predict (or explicitly rate based on) offers extended rather than their assessment of the prospect's future D1 ability.
westphillywarrior
Sophomore
Posts 196
03-20-17 11:48 AM - Post#227782    

That makes a lot of sense. When I see a story about an Ivy recruit, the first place my eye goes is to look for what other interest/offers the kid had. Next is to try to guess how legit that interest/offer was.
Makes sense the recruiting analysts are doing the same thing.
SRP
Postdoc
Posts 4894
03-20-17 04:02 PM - Post#227809    

Like all such social influence processes, this one seems likely to create bubbles or cascades in which prospects' evaluations depart from their "fundamentals." Strong-minded coaches with good evaluation skills ought to be able to beat this inefficient "market" where everybody is looking at what everyone else thinks.



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