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L.C.
General User
Member Since: 8/31/2005
Location: United States
Post Count: 10,470
Status: Offline
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| Are recruiting rankings more accurate now than before? |
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Posted: 11/29/2024 10:29:41 AM |
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One of my running gags over the years has been that, if you want to know which Freshmen are most likely to play immediately, always look to the lowest ranked recruit in the class. Is there still an inverse correlation between the recruiting rankings and the likelihood of playing as a Freshman, or have the ratings services improved in the accuracy of their ratings of G5 recruits?
I decided to take a look at the incoming freshmen, which consisted of 16 players. Of those 16, seven have played, and 9 have not. I did this analysis before the Ball State game, so after 11 games have been played. Those that have played, and the number of games they have played in are as follows:
Brune - 11
Bowman - 10
Mathis - 7
Haskins - 3
Morton - 3
Hurst - 1
Miller - 1
How did this correlate to the rankings? I compared this to rankings from ON3, Rivals, and 247Sports. For each, I divided the recruiting classes into 3 groupings.
ON3 - their ratings are very granular, with attempts at fine discrimination, each recruit rated to the hundredth of a point. I simply divided their ratings into thirds, and the following is the average games played for each group:
Top five recruits: 2.0 games played average
Next five recruits: 2.4 games played
Bottom six recruits: 2.3 games played
Rivals - All Ohio recruits are either rated 5.3, 5.4, or 5.5
Rated 5.5: 2.5 games played average
Rated 5.4: 0.5 games played average
Rated 5.3: 5.5 games played average
247Sports - Their ratings are integers between 80-86, so I split them as follows:
Rated 85-86: 2.0 games played average
Rated 82-83: 1.7 games played average
Rated 80-82: 3.5 games played average
Yes, all recruiting services still show a negative correlation. The reason, in my opinion, is the same reason that Ohio's teams consistently perform at a higher level than would be predicted by the recruiting rankings. The reason is that Ohio always seem to find a few gems in the rough, players that are excellent, but overlooked. Virtually every Ohio player ever drafted fits that group, overlooked by the recruiting services. In this class Brune, Bowman, DJ Morton, and AJ Miller are rated at or near the bottom of Ohio's class by all the services. If you remove those four players, the rest of the ratings probably make sense.
If you took a consensus of the three services, the two lowest rated players are Miller and Bowman, and both have played, and in Bowman's case, he has played a lot (#16 in tackles, and #10 in tackles for loss). So, yes, my old gag continues to hold true: the players ranked lowest in the class continue to be immediate contributors.
Last Edited: 11/29/2024 10:36:00 AM by L.C.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” ― Epictetus
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