2014 Recruits

[TBC Alum]

Were any of our last 3 NBA players Top 150 guys? (Rodney, KK, AT) Was Doug Top 150? Rankings aren't always accurate.

I don't know if we can look at things this way now.

I'm curious what the background is of NBA players from the C-7. Were they Top 150 guys?

[jayball]

The point is that not necessarily numbers themselves, but more that we can't continually have lower classes than most, if not all, of the conference and expect to excel).

Now, we just have to do it.

I agree. It is just hard for me to translate that to each kid we are looking at. Rating recruits is not an exact science, so that causes me to pause before worrying about our class ranking or any particular kid. No doubt we will need to land some quality players to consistently be in contention.

[gtmoBlue]

Looks as though we should add Minnesota (if we haven't already) to the shortlist (Iowa St, K State, Marquette, Mizzou, Wisconsin) of schools in direct competition with the Jays.
Many similar names on their list of recruiting targets. Seems they occupy a similar niche, insofar as bigger recruits generally opt for out of state name programs.

http://minnesota.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1512467

http://minnesota.rivals.com/content.asp?CID=1513196

Late Entry:

Both Bluejay Bilas and AttyAlum make excellent posts and points.
We cannot necessarily continue to be successful, in the BE, if we do not upgrade at least some of our recruits.

Developing players takes time, effort, more time, and patience - including the ever present urge to RS a player, hoping he will improve through osmosis.
Exp: Redshirting, injury, and limited PT have hampered Geoff, IMO. Hopefully he can breakout this season with more PT, better foot or leg health, and confidence from the coaching staff. The same could be said in Nevin's case, but we won't have to deal with that as he has departed.

Prolonging a kids' involvement in the program via redshirting hints at a few issues.
1) The player is not a college-ready player and needs work.
2) The staff "sees" potential and are willing to take a chance with the player.
3) The coaches are willing to invest in the kid, even to the extent of "burning up" an available scholie down the road (year 3, 4, or 5). Possibly due to
not having other viable candidate recruits in the pipeline.

BB's and AA's points are well taken. We now need to sign non-project, college-ready players. Rankings/ratings are NOT just numbers. Recruiting services and folks like Telep, Biancardi, Francisco are apt students of the college game, they are astute observers and evaluators of young talent, and they constantly re-evaluate recruits. To their credit, Coach Mac and staff upped the ante in 2012 and 2013, and although we did a DA both seasons - as we were still in the MVC. It was a very good sign to see them going after high level recruits. IMO we will strike gold in this upcoming 2014 class as BluejayBilas alluded to. However, consistency and continuity in recruiting is a must from here on out. We no longer have the luxury of taking on a couple of projects each year. And as shown by the current situation...it may not always be wise to accept commits from the "1st recruit to commit" either, especially when we have several high-level recruits still in the mix.

[gtmoBlue]

One of the other boards is putting out articles on the 2014 class. Good takes on each position, but with some
differing recruits than here, and a couple of omissions. However, with 3 main boards for Creighton, we have
3 differing lists of recruits. No continuity. I suppose that is to be expected, but it can be confusing, especially
for a 1st time user, a new member, or a visitor. Guess we'll just have to monitor all 3 places.

Looking forward to HTA's recruiting breakout compilation next week.

We only have 2 other boards, Rivals and Scout? http://creighton.rivals.com/

[HandDownManDown]

One of the other boards is putting out articles on the 2014 class. Good takes on each position, but with some
differing recruits than here, and a couple of omissions. However, with 3 main boards for Creighton, we have
3 differing lists of recruits. No continuity. I suppose that is to be expected, but it can be confusing, especially
for a 1st time user, a new member, or a visitor. Guess we'll just have to monitor all 3 places.

Looking forward to HTA's recruiting breakout compilation next week.

Links?

[Bluejay Bilas]

Were any of our last 3 NBA players Top 150 guys? (Rodney, KK, AT) Was Doug Top 150? Rankings aren't always accurate.

I don't know if we can look at things this way now.

I'm curious what the background is of NBA players from the C-7. Were they Top 150 guys?

Out of curiosity, I spent about a half hour looking at old rivals.com profiles to test my assumption that most probably were highly ranked HS prospects. What I found to be the case was not a revelation, makes sense and seems to be true quite a bit with how ranked recruits fare in college, is that a top 50 ranking clearly has some correlation with future success, rankings below 50 mean less long term, and a fair number of less heralded high major recruits make it to the NBA. In other words, the recruiting services can be trusted to do a pretty good job rating the best three or four dozen players each year. After those guys, there may not be a huge gap between a kid considered to be the 67th best player and a kid viewed as the 145th best player, or between those lower ranked guys and unranked guys who are good enough to get offers from high majors or the best mid major programs

Anyway, a good number of the C7 guys who are still in the League or are going to be drafted this summer were viewed as very elite high major recruits in high school. Wesley Matthews was top 100. Harkless, Lowry, Wilson Chandler, Porter, Wayns were top 50 (and some of those guys were top or borderline top 25). Ledo and Monroe were top 10.

Then, there are several guys who were unranked, including Roy Hibbert. Foye, MarShon Brooks, Dante Cunningham and Jeff Green were also much more like Korver, Tolliver or McDermott than like Lance Stephenson or Michael Beasley, in that, at least per my rivals.com searching, they were nationally unranked. Additionally, you have a couple of those Marquette Juco guys, who were pretty well off the grid.

Not that whether a guy is an NBA player has a direct relationship to team success in college hoops, but nothing in what I found changed my opinion about what Creighton needs to be achieving in the recruiting department. I hardly expect that our roster will ever resemble Michigan State, Duke or Arizona, but if we are going to have continued success, it can’t resemble the good Altman and McDermott Creighton teams we’ve followed, either. If we never land top 50 guys, and can’t land at least one nationally rated guy per year, our odds of making the NCAA tournament on a regular or even semi-regular basis seem slim, and the odds of heading to the Sweet Sixteen or beyond are very poor.

[Chicagojayfan]

Were any of our last 3 NBA players Top 150 guys? (Rodney, KK, AT) Was Doug Top 150? Rankings aren't always accurate.

I don't know if we can look at things this way now.

I'm curious what the background is of NBA players from the C-7. Were they Top 150 guys?

Out of curiosity, I spent about a half hour looking at old rivals.com profiles to test my assumption that most probably were highly ranked HS prospects. What I found to be the case was not a revelation, makes sense and seems to be true quite a bit with how ranked recruits fare in college, is that a top 50 ranking clearly has some correlation with future success, rankings below 50 mean less long term, and a fair number of less heralded high major recruits make it to the NBA. In other words, the recruiting services can be trusted to do a pretty good job rating the best three or four dozen players each year. After those guys, there may not be a huge gap between a kid considered to be the 67th best player and a kid viewed as the 145th best player, or between those lower ranked guys and unranked guys who are good enough to get offers from high majors or the best mid major programs

Anyway, a good number of the C7 guys who are still in the League or are going to be drafted this summer were viewed as very elite high major recruits in high school. Wesley Matthews was top 100. Harkless, Lowry, Wilson Chandler, Porter, Wayns were top 50 (and some of those guys were top or borderline top 25). Ledo and Monroe were top 10.

Then, there are several guys who were unranked, including Roy Hibbert. Foye, MarShon Brooks, Dante Cunningham and Jeff Green were also much more like Korver, Tolliver or McDermott than like Lance Stephenson or Michael Beasley, in that, at least per my rivals.com searching, they were nationally unranked. Additionally, you have a couple of those Marquette Juco guys, who were pretty well off the grid.

Not that whether a guy is an NBA player has a direct relationship to team success in college hoops, but nothing in what I found changed my opinion about what Creighton needs to be achieving in the recruiting department. I hardly expect that our roster will ever resemble Michigan State, Duke or Arizona, but if we are going to have continued success, it can’t resemble the good Altman and McDermott Creighton teams we’ve followed, either. If we never land top 50 guys, and can’t land at least one nationally rated guy per year, our odds of making the NCAA tournament on a regular or even semi-regular basis seem slim, and the odds of heading to the Sweet Sixteen or beyond are very poor.

I think it is unfair to lump together Altman and McDermott's recruiting in this case. I did a lot of analysis a while back to look at recruiting and identify changes. The biggest was the number of kids who had other BCS offers. Altman had a strategy of identifying kids who were under the radar and really avoided confronting other BCS programs. McDermott has hit the AAU circuit hard and done a great job of selling the program even when it was MVC against B12, for instance. The Big East will only make that easier in the future.

I also think the overall "rankings" are more suspect that the other offers a kid has. As a rule of thumb, toss out the Rivals rankings as "imperfect" measures and verify that you are recruiting against and winning recruiting battles against teams that are BCS and top 25 programs. That is the real measuring stick.

For an extreme example, look at these two guys from a past class:

PG - 4 stars, no other offers, interest from Fresno State, Stanford, San Diego State (may have gotten him early enough, but no BCS offers should be a red flag)

SF - 2 stars, offers from Marquette, Providence, Northern Iowa, Colorado State, interest from Penn State, Minnesota, Michigan.

Which of those turned out better? Which one moved us up the Rivals recruiting rankings?

For me (especially in Basketball recruiting), looking at the other offers tells you a lot more than the raw ranking does for a player.

Which brings me to the 2013 class. let's look at the opposing offers:
Hanson - Arizona State, Gonzaga, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Northern Iowa, and interest from Wiscy, Minnesota and Iowa State (I think it's good we locked him up when we did). Can anyone find an Altman player (without academic or other troubles) that was that competitively recruited?

Hegner - Iowa State, Boston College, Northwestern, Marquette and others.
Harris - the most lightly recruited of the bunch, but we saw him up close and liked him a lot. Certainly he seems to fit our offensive style in a big way with his ability to pass, shoot and drive, and interest was supposedly growing as we landed him.

One difference going forward is the evaluation time we have now before we offer. When in the MVC, we HAD to offer early to show we were serious. Now we have the luxury of taking more time to build the relationship and see how the kid develops. If we offer early and dial in on a player, I expect that means they are a much more highly recruited guy than we would be trying for in the past.

[gtmoBlue]

Fortunately this is not a comparative analysis of coaches recruiting styles. AA, BB, and HandDownManDown all speak to their perceptions of CU's recruiting needs going forward. Creighton has not done well in getting commits and signings from our top level of recruiting targets for years, and our 2012 and 2013 efforts merely continued that unfortunate trend. The issue had more to do with our conference affiliation than who our coach was. We were a Midmajor team in a Midmajor conference, regardless of how good our team was.

Agreed that our new conference may allow some additional time/evaluative "breathing room" up the road. However, many in the 2014 group were offered early, by necessity of still being in the MVC until a month or so ago. The point by the members stated above is we now must do better in getting commits from our top tier recruits. I hope we can all agree with their points. I do.

Just leafing through these pages I counted 2015: 11 offers and 15 additional with CU interest, 2016: 1 offer and 2 with CU interest. That was merely counting through the 1st five pages.

[Bluejay Bilas]

I think it is unfair to lump together Altman and McDermott's recruiting in this case. I did a lot of analysis a while back to look at recruiting and identify changes. The biggest was the number of kids who had other BCS offers. Altman had a strategy of identifying kids who were under the radar and really avoided confronting other BCS programs. McDermott has hit the AAU circuit hard and done a great job of selling the program even when it was MVC against B12, for instance. The Big East will only make that easier in the future.

I was ready for a coaching change, yet think it’s a stretch to say that Altman and his staff avoided competing against high majors for recruits. Similarly, I like McDermott, am not unhappy with his staff’s recruiting approaches, and am willing to wait and see what happens with all of his ‘11 through ‘13 recruits. But, I cannot yet get too excited by a staff that thus far has given us Coach Mac’s son, transfer Grant Gibbs, Austin Chatman, and a lot of question marks.

I also think the overall "rankings" are more suspect that the other offers a kid has. As a rule of thumb, toss out the Rivals rankings as "imperfect" measures and verify that you are recruiting against and winning recruiting battles against teams that are BCS and top 25 programs. That is the real measuring stick.

Offers are a good measuring stick, but unless there is ever more transparency or a new set of rules regarding how “offers” are made and honored, an offer-based method has some flaws. I agree that such a method of evaluating where a recruit stands has some advantages over looking at stars and rankings from multiple national rating services.

For an extreme example, look at these two guys from a past class:

PG - 4 stars, no other offers, interest from Fresno State, Stanford, San Diego State (may have gotten him early enough, but no BCS offers should be a red flag)

SF - 2 stars, offers from Marquette, Providence, Northern Iowa, Colorado State, interest from Penn State, Minnesota, Michigan.

Which of those turned out better? Which one moved us up the Rivals recruiting rankings?

Poor Bock. He really was a miss, and has not exactly shined at Pacific.

I am a pretty big Wragge fan, but it’s hard at this point to compare him to a 4-star guy and say that his 2-star rating was way off base, even though he is certainly better than that specific 4-star recruit. Wragge brings plenty to the table, and I am certain that numerous high major teams would be happy to have him as a bench option, but let’s not act as though he’s performed well above what his recruiting rating suggested (although I remember it kind of seeming like that during that miserable CIT year, where he was the only guy who seemed to be living up to or surpassing expectations). If one Ethan Wragge-caliber player joined our team every year, that would be great, so long as a couple better, less one-dimensional guys were part of his class.

Which brings me to the 2013 class. let's look at the opposing offers:
Hanson - Arizona State, Gonzaga, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Northern Iowa, and interest from Wiscy, Minnesota and Iowa State (I think it's good we locked him up when we did). Can anyone find an Altman player (without academic or other troubles) that was that competitively recruited?

Hegner - Iowa State, Boston College, Northwestern, Marquette and others.
Harris - the most lightly recruited of the bunch, but we saw him up close and liked him a lot. Certainly he seems to fit our offensive style in a big way with his ability to pass, shoot and drive, and interest was supposedly growing as we landed him.

No need to sell me on these kids, and I will be thrilled if all three make the staff look like geniuses. They each have high major size, and Hegner especially seems to have a unique skill set for his size. If their drives and work ethics are first rate, there is no reason why at least 2 of them can’t have very solid Creighton careers. I’ve just noted more than once that historic trends and the related odds suggest that this group is not likely to be Creighton’s Fab Three (or Fab Five, if you add in the two Jucos).

[HandDownManDown]

Does ESPN even pay attention to this stuff? They have a brand new and updated 'top 100' but we're not even listed whatsoever under Terrell, Macura, Benson, or Demery.

I know that isn't us blowing smoke on these guys. Are they just super slow or lacking competence?