I have been reading how many people think our future is brighter because recruiting is the best it has ever been. I thought it would be a good idea to look at whether this is in fact true.
I pulled all of my rankings from this site. They use a point system to combine top 100 recruits from many different “experts”.
Here are the recruits and their compiled rankings by year.
1998 – Adam Harrington (25) and Keith Bean (64)
1999 – Damien Wilkins (11), Marshall Williams (33) and Cliff Crawford (61)
2000 – Scooter Sherril (38), Mike Bell (95) and Marcus Melvin (98)
2001 – Julius Hodge (7), Levi Watkins (60), Josh Powell (65)
2002 – Cameron Bennerman (84)
2003 – None
2004 – Cedric Simmons (34), Andrew Brackman (60) and Gavin Grant (78)
2005 – Brandon Costner (19) and Courtney Fells (35)
2006- Larry Davis (60)
I am comparing strickly recruit rankings because the assumption is that we are recruiting better and we can all use hindsight to see who was actually better or worse than their rankings.
My observations:
1) The rankings for the 2004/2005 classes are in line or below what we have seen in the past (except of course 2002 and 2003).
2) There is an erie similarity in the makeup of the 2000/2001 and the 2004/2005 classes. There is one guard, one forward that plays guard, 3 (or 4) forwards and one center in each set of classes.
3) Five of the seven payers from the 1998-2000 classes tranferred or were asked to leave. That trend seems to have changed for the better.
4) 2002 and 2006 have a simliar drop in recruit rankings. In 2002 many said it was because of Herb’s shaky job status.
5) We went five years with two McD AAs on our team at the same time.
My Conclusions:
1) There is a strange correlation between keeping your recruits and post season appearances.
2) Our recruiting now is not any better than what we have had in the past, so to expect improved performance based on improved recruiting is not realistic. Based on our talent level it is realistic to expect similar results.
3) We seem to have down years after two succesful years of recruiting.
4) We recruit alot of forwards while college basketball is a guard’s game.
