The apt comparison would be Russell Westbrook. He was a 3-star recruit heading to UCLA, ranked just outside the top 100. Westbrook was kind of an afterthought that year. The top recruit was forward James Keefe while they already had their point guard, Darren Collison, from the previous class.
What a run of point guards for Ben Howland, by the way.
Jordan Farmar
Darren Collison
Russell Westbrook
Jrue Holiday
Well, kinda, yeah. Obviously the odds are longer for winning the lottery, but the principle is the same.
Is anything destiny? For every Curry or Lillard there are a whole lot more NBA players who were rated highly out of high school and even more unranked guys who after college have only played ball at the YMCA. Again, I don't understand the argument you and others appear to be making. Are you really saying that because the rankings aren't 100% predictive that they're useless? Because I can't think of any predictive measure or ranking in any area that always predicts accurately. It's a measure of probability, like anything else. If top 10 players become college stars and/or NBA players 75% of the time (and I'm making that number up, to illustrate my point) while guys outside the top 100 only become college stars and/or NBA players 5% of the time (again, making it up), then I know which players I'd bet on to become college stars and/or NBA players. And I also know that if you bet on unranked guys (rather than top 10 or top 20 guys) to become college or NBA stars, on average you'd lose.
I don’t think your specific argument is sound here. It strikes me that characterizing the probability of a 3-star ultimately making the NBA and the probability of anyone winning the lottery as exemplifying the “same principle” is closer to the apples-oranges fallacy, or in this case apples and armadillos.
The “principle” here seems to be “long odds.” But sometimes a difference in degree — the improbability of a 3-star making the NBA v. the orders-of-magnitude-greater improbability of winning the lottery — is so large as to constitute a difference in kind. So the principle is only superficially the same.
(Tbc, I am not arguing either that rankings are useless or that K should focus on 3/4-stars and forget 5-stars.)
I don't recall anyone arguing that they are.
What I believe to be true though, is that recruiting ranking do a pretty good job of telling you which players have the best chance to be impactful right away. Sure, there are highly ranked guys who are busts and lower ranked guys who become stars. No one is denying that. But if you want to find a future lottery pick, a future All-ACC kinda player, give me any 1 top ten ranked recruit over 10 recruits of your choice ranked outside the top 50 and I think my odds are vastly better than yours of getting the stud.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
I did a little dive into the numbers over on reddit, which you can read here: https://old.reddit.com/r/CollegeBask...ruits_perform/
The question I asked was "how well do teams with 3 or more 5-star recruits in the same recruiting class do during that season in the one-and-done era?" The answer, at least what I see in the data, is "pretty good."
There have only been two teams, the 2012-13 Kentucky team and the 2020-21 Duke team (womp womp) that failed to make the NCAA Tournament.
Of the 24 teams, only 5 were unranked in the Final AP Top 25 poll.
10 of the teams finished the regular season with the best record in their conference.
11 of the teams won their conference tournament.
14 of the teams made it to the Sweet 16 or farther.
10 of the teams made it to the Elite 8 or farther.
6 of the teams (25%) made it to the Final Four.
4 of the teams made it to the National Title Game while 2 of them (2012 Kentucky and 2015 Duke) won the NCAA National Championship.
A lot of the teams were from Kentucky (10) or Duke (6). Of the Duke teams, all have come from the Class of 2014 (Allen, Jones, Okafor, Winslow) or later.
If you filter this list to just teams with 4 or more 5-star recruits, the only team that didn't win their conference tournament or make it to the Sweet 16 or beyond is the the Duke Class of 2020.
This doesn't mean that "rankings are destiny," but I think it gives you the idea that having a ton of talent on your roster is a pretty good way to construct a team. In fact, it is empirically the most successful strategy in basketball. There are TONS of teams that are "experienced" that fail to do well during the season.
Good analysis here. Out of curiosity, how many 5-star recruits are there in each class? Are we talking top-20? Top-30? Based on RSCI, the 2020 Duke class brought in two top-20 players (Jalen Johnson No. 11, Jeremy Roach No. 20), and a series of 21-50 guys (Steward No. 24, Williams No. 25, Brakefield No. 33, Coleman No. 49). I'd guess by your reddit post, that you or whomever assigns stars considers everyone in the top-25 or top-30 to be a 5-star?
I was basing this analysis on 247Sports Composite rankings. They typically hand out 5-star status to the top 25 or so players, and often a few more on the margins. For example, there were the following number in recent classes:
2021: 26
2020: 28 (coincidently, Mark Williams was 28th)
2019: 28 (coincidently, Wendell Moore was 29th and a 4-star)
2018: 29
2017: 26
2016: 29
So, I guess the rumors that Baldwin would commit today were not so true...
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
Soon Jason, soon ! But dont get your Hope's up too high. But then again ?
"In what seems to be an acknowledgement that Baldwin is, in fact, headed elsewhere, the program has announced the number selections of the incoming freshmen and transfers via its social media platforms."
from
https://247sports.com/college/duke/Article/Duke-Basketball-releases-2021-22-jersey-numbers-including-freshmen-165120198/
Seems like speculation but is there a trend to this?
Last edited by BlueDevilTommy; 05-07-2021 at 09:27 AM. Reason: Added quotations
It certainly seems like evidence that he isn't coming. I suspect we've had cases in the past where a player was added after we "announced" jersey numbers. But that's probably been more like cases where guys reclassified during the summer rather than the more normal recruits.
It's early May, and we have had guys announce in mid May within the past decade (e.g., Jefferson, Duval); I can't recall if the team waited until after those guys announced to do jersey numbers or not.
Coincidently, the Duke MBB twitter account released jersey numbers for the Class of 2016 on May 6th. A few days later, Marques Bolden joined the class.
https://twitter.com/DukeMBB/status/728718705937485825