Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Recruiting over the last five seasons

I have this perception that the B10 is getting its collective butts kicked on the recruiting front, particularly compared to the ACC, but also just in general. Being the geek that I am, I decided to go look at the data and see if it matched my intuition.

I used the RSCI rankings for the last five seasons. I looked at the recruits ranked from 1-20, 21-50, and 51-100, then added the totals up for each team. Then I added them up by conference. I used this year's conference affiliation, not the conference affiliation at the time of the recruitment, because that was just too damn hard.

You can see the results below. Basically, my perception was correct - the ACC is stomping the B10 on the recruiting front. Duke, UNC, GTech, NC St, and Maryland out-recruited the entire B10 by themselves. However, there were a couple surprises to me as well. I was surprised that the Big East and SEC scored so close to the ACC overall, I was surprised by the huge gap between the top 3 conferences and the Big Ten/ Pac 10, and I was surprised that the Big 12 fared so poorly. Especially since Kansas got more Top 100 recruits than any other team, so the rest of the Big 12 is really blowing chunks in recruiting. Note that the ACC pulled in more Top 50 recruits than the B12 got from the Top 100.

It's also pretty easy to see the direct correlation between recruiting success and program success. Clearly it's possible to be successful in a given season without being one of the powerhouse recruiters, but more interesting is that if you ARE one of the powerhouse recruiters, it's unlikely you'll fare poorly. Looking at the teams with 8 or more Top 100 recruits, Michigan really stands out in terms of lack of success.

Draw your own conclusions, but I think one thing is clear - the B10 needs to start recruiting better. A distant 4th doesn't cut it.

One other note. Of the 500 top 100 players over the last five seasons, about 35 didn't go choose to go to play college ball. Some went NBA, some prep school, some JUCO, and one decided to play football at Texas A&M. Of the 465 remaining players, the six major conferences got 88% of them.


Conference 1-20 21-50 51-100 Total
ACC 22 24 42 88
Big East 10 28 46 84
SEC 21 22 38 81
Pac Ten 12 16 27 55
Big Ten 11 14 30 55
Big 12 10 9 25 44

B10 School 1-20 21-50 51-100 Total
Michigan State 4 2 4 10
Michigan 2 3 4 9
Illinois 0 2 5 7
Indiana 2 1 4 7
Iowa 0 2 4 6
Ohio State 0 2 3 5
Wisconsin 1 2 2 5
Minnesota 2 0 2 4
Purdue 0 0 2 2

School 1-20 21-50 51-100 Total
NBA 27 1 2 30
Kansas 6 4 5 15
Duke 8 2 3 13
North Carolina 8 3 2 13
UCLA 4 4 5 13
Georgia Tech 1 3 8 12
Arizona 3 4 4 11
Connecticut 4 3 4 11
Florida 4 3 4 11
Louisville 2 4 5 11
Alabama 2 3 5 10
Michigan State 4 2 4 10
Syracuse 1 7 2 10
Memphis 2 3 4 9
Michigan 2 3 4 9
Missouri 1 4 4 9
NC State 2 2 5 9
Wake Forest 1 2 6 9
Florida St 1 6 1 8
Kentucky 4 3 1 8
Maryland 1 4 3 8
Miss State 0 3 5 8
Oklahoma 1 2 5 8
Texas 5 1 2 8
Villanova 1 4 3 8
California 2 2 3 7
DePaul 0 1 6 7
Illinois 0 2 5 7
Indiana 2 1 4 7
LSU 4 2 1 7
Notre Dame 0 3 4 7
Cincinnati 0 3 3 6
Georgia 0 2 4 6
Iowa 0 2 4 6
Marquette 0 2 4 6
Miami 0 0 6 6
Pittsburgh 0 1 5 6
Stanford 1 0 5 6
Washington 1 2 3 6
Arkansas 1 2 2 5
Charlotte 0 1 4 5
Iowa State 0 1 4 5
Ohio State 0 2 3 5
Ok State 2 0 3 5
Southern Cal 0 2 3 5
Virginia 0 2 3 5
Wisconsin 1 2 2 5
Minnesota 2 0 2 4
Seton Hall 1 0 3 4
Tennessee 0 0 4 4
Arizona St 0 0 3 3
Georgetown 0 0 3 3
Gonzaga 0 0 3 3
Oregon 1 1 1 3
Providence 0 0 3 3
UNLV 0 1 2 3
Xavier 0 0 3 3
Auburn 0 1 1 2
Boston College 0 0 2 2
Clemson 0 0 2 2
Kansas State 0 0 2 2
Purdue 0 0 2 2
South Carolina 0 0 2 2
Texas Tech 0 0 2 2
Vanderbilt 0 0 2 2
Baylor 0 0 3 1
BYU 0 0 1 1
Colorado 1 0 0 1
Florida Intl 0 0 1 1
Massachusetts 0 0 1 1
Nebraska 0 0 1 1
New Mexico 0 0 1 1
Rutgers 0 0 1 1
Texas A&M 0 0 1 1
Virginia Tech 0 0 1 1
West Virginia 1 0 0 1

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