The Philadelphia Inquirer had a real nice article today on basketball recruiting guru, Dave Telep. (Link to article).
Telep, who lives in Raleigh, is easily one of THE BEST talent evaluators out there and sits a top our preferences of recruiting gurus. Additionally, SFN has some friends are know Telep personally and think that he is an outstanding guy whose opinion should be very highly respected. That is good enough for us to provide a personal stamp of approval.
As you will read in the article you will appreciate his penchant for perfection and hard work. But, the article also provides some very interesting and important anecdotes about basketball recruiting rankings, which are typically much more successful at predicting future success of players (and programs) than recruiting rankings in football.
Short-term evaluations can be made on days like today, the first day of the NCAA fall signing period, when many of the top Division I basketball prospects sign letters of intent. But Telep’s study examines five years’ worth of high school classes, from 2000 to 2004, in probably the largest-scale look at how all the evaluations turn out.
Of his top 100 players in the five-year period, 28 percent proved by their later performance that they had been ranked too high, and 13 percent had been ranked too low. He found that most of the overvalued players had been ranked 26th to 50th, while most of the undervalued had ranged from 51st to 75th.
Some of Telep’s findings confirm the conventional wisdom. The four schools that signed the most top-10 players all won national titles. Telep also figured out that 70 percent of his top 100 players turned into productive players if they landed in his definition of “elite” programs.
But he went deeper. From his data, he found that “late bloomers,” players whose value ascended in the second half of their high school careers, succeeded 89 percent of the time, while players who “peaked early” failed to meet expectations 59 percent of the time.
Telep determined that “elite” players with academic risks were worth signing, but that players who transferred in high school multiple times failed to live up to college expectations 61 percent of the time. Moreover, foreign-born students in the top 100 were successful just 32 percent of the time. Among positions, he found that centers had the highest failure rate.
Another interesting finding was that “most times when a mid-major signs a top-100 recruit, the player doesn’t meet expectations.” He draws the obvious conclusion: “There’s a reason the mid-major landed the prospect.”
If you are interested in understanding another layer of local basketball recruiting then you really need to read this entry for some very important perspective.
