Recruiting Statistics 2012-2017

[JazzNC]

There has been a lot of grumbling on the message boards about the decline of Syracuse recruiting. Understanding that emotions sometimes taint fans' perspectives (including my own), I decided to do a bit of research myself. Please keep in mind that this was done fairly quickly, may not be 100% accurate, and is a small sample size.

I chose to study Syracuse, Duke, and NC State from the years 2012 to 2017. Here are my findings with all rankings taken from 2 4 7 (for consistency):

Duke 2012 landed 2/6 top 100 (33.3%), 0/1 100+ (0%)
Duke 2013 landed 4/9 top 100 (44.4%), 0/1 100+ (0%)
Duke 2014 landed 4/12 top 100 (33.3%), 0/0 100+ (0%)
Duke 2015 landed 4/8 top 100 (50%), 2/2 100+ (100%)
Duke 2016 landed 6/10 top 100 (60%), 1/1 100+(100%)
Duke 2017 landed 5/18 top 100 (27.8%), 1/1 100+(100%)

NCSt 2012 landed 3/12 top 100 (25%), 0/3 100+ (0%)
NCSt 2013 landed 4/20 top 100 (20%), 1/6 100+ (16.7%)
NCSt 2014 landed 3/24 top 100 (12.5%), 0/5 100+ (0%)
NCSt 2015 landed 1/24 top 100 4=(4.2%), 1/4 100+ (25%)
NCSt 2016 landed 4/29 top 100 (13.8%), 1/7 100+(14.3%)
NCSt 2017 landed 1/20 top 100 (5%), 0/15 100+ (0%)

SU 2012 landed 2/6 top 100 (33% - Grant, Coleman), 100+ (0%)
SU 2013 landed 3/17 top 100 (17.6% - Ennis, Roberson, BJ Johnson), 2/2 100+ (100% - Chino, Patterson)
SU 2014 landed 2/11 top 100 (18.2% - K Joseph, Chris McCullough), 0/0 100+ (0%)
SU 2015 landed 4/9 top 100 (44.4% - Howard, Diagne, Lydon, Richardson) 0/3 100+ (0%)
SU 2016 landed 3/9 top 100 (33.3% -Battle, Moyer, Thompson), 0/0 100+ (0%)
SU 2017 landed 0/12 top 100 (0%), 4/4 (100% - Brissett, Sidibe, Washington, Dolezaj)


Analysis: It's way too early to say Syracuse is recruiting poorly, but 2017 is the first year we failed to land a top 100 recruit. We faired better than NC State (but NC State's 2017 class is reflective of the coach being terminated). Furthermore, Duke (as expected) far outperformed Syracuse. Most significantly, in 2012 SU did not sign any players out of the top 100. In 2013, the two players outside the top 100 were ranked 155, and 158. In 2014, 2015, and 2016 we did not land any outside the top 100. In 2017, ALL FOUR of our guys fell outside the top 100 with Dolezaj 125, Brissett 155, Sidibe 240, and Washington 316. That's a BIG drop off from previous years. Yes, it could be argued that they should be ranked higher. But I didn't make the rankings...

Final Analysis: We need to rebound big time with the class of 2018. I want this group to succeed, but the numbers (if I copied them and did the math correctly) paint a picture that is at least somewhat concerning.

Have at it...

 

[HoustonCuse]

I have no clue what these numbers mean.

 

[JazzNC]

I have no clue what these numbers mean.

Take the first line...

It means that in 2012 Duke offered 6 top 100 recruits and landed 2, for a 33.3% closing rate. That same year they offered 0 kids outside of the top 100 recruits for a 0% rate.

Each line can be read the same way. Hope this makes it clearer.

 

[jordoo]

Take the first line...

It means that in 2012 Duke offered 6 top 100 recruits and landed 2, for a 33.3% closing rate. That same year they offered 0 kids outside of the top 100 recruits for a 0% rate.

Each line can be read the same way. Hope this makes it clearer.

It's an interesting statistic but it doesn't really paint a clear picture. For instance Duke's first line they went 2/6 in the top 100 offers. How many guys did they want to take? Were some of those offers conditional? They could have gotten there top 2 choices who were both top 15 players and they get a 33% rating when in reality the class was a big win. Or they could have gotten the 2 lowest rated guys who were options C for them. Again we have no idea how many open ships they had.

I think you can see where a team like SU or Duke (Who don't throw out a million offers) have missed on there primary targets based on the overall number of top 100 offers. If you are taking only 2 or 3 top 100 guys but offered 10+ you likely missed on at least a couple plan A guys. A team like NcSt under Godfried is almost like a throw away score for this stat because they are offering a 5th of the top 100 every season which is ridiculous.

The one thing that this shows clearly is that SU didn't get any of the kids we initially had as option A for 2017. In a class where we basically needed to bring in players at every position we probably missed on option A and B for all of them. We offered 12, where involved with even more that we didn't offer and wound up with none. I actually feel like we scrambled beautifully to wind up with what we did. It could have been much worse the way things were headed. But we were certainly scrambling, no doubt about it.

Brissett is the player of the year in Canada and simply isn't rated in the states. He's a top 50 kid if he played in the states.
Sidibe is a kid that is just coming into his own. I thought he was rated by some services in the top 100 but I could be wrong. He's a good fit for our system and should be able to provide minutes right away.
Washington was on the all Canadian 1st team with Brissett so he's no slouch and he seems like one of those kids we will be thrilled with in a couple of years.
Dolezaj would have been a top 100 guy in the states no question. Where in the top 100 is hard to say but he's a legit talent.

Add Thorpe and Hughes and we plugged some holes very well for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

 

[CJOJ]

Love the ambition and time and effort spent on this.

However, like jordoo already got at a little, I don't know how accurate a picture this truly is. May help with some general trends, but couldn't you have a year where you have say 6 offers out on the table and only 2 open scholarships? Say first 2 of the 6 to announce commit to cuse, the other offers still show up but shouldn't be counted as misses right?

We technically would've been 100% that year, not 33%.

Unless you had a way to filter that out? I'm no expert by any means.

I do agree that it probably helps see trends in that years that there are a lot more offers on the table may indicate multiple misses. Although even that has some extenuating circumstances as it could also just be an indication of a year when there were a lot of players graduating / going pro early and thus a greater need for more players.

 

[JazzNC]

I agree with the comments that folks above have written. The data definitely has limitations especially when it does not factor in the number of scholarships available.

But Syracuse had 4 open scholarships available for 2017, offered 12 top 100 recruits and got zero. That's a true 0% closing rate.

I really wanted to do every ACC school, but I just didn't have the time. Perhaps I'll keep this thread going and try to research the number of scholarships each team had available, and try to extrapolate some different data.

I'd also like to throw in some other schools like Gonzaga, Nova, Butler, etc because they are succeeding as non P5 schools. I'd like to see who they are landing and where we stack up.

I'm not going to comment on the Swider thread right now because I think people need to cool off and calm down.

I don't think the sky is falling but we NEED to examine the health of recruiting, regardless of JB's comments today. Did you really think he'd say anything differently?

But instead of complaining about missing out on Swider, let's do something constructive. Let's get to the bottom of it. Let's identify our weaknesses and areas of strength. Let's look at similar schools in prestige and or success over the last 10 years. I think that's much more constructive than pissing and moaning about who we didn't get.

If anyone else wants to contribute some time to research, I'd welcome it. Much better than the complaining.

 

[JazzNC]

I find it amusing that it's the same old thing...

People are either posting that recruiting is going downhill, and all the reasons why, OR they are defending the downhill trend. Admittedly, I have contributed.

Both are really futile. If you want to argue that we can't guarantee that a new coach could do better, than do some research. What good basketball schools have lost a coach to retirement or transfer, and how did the new coaches fare after 5 years?

Instead of complaining or defending, let's put our efforts into solutions. Or at the very least, make educated arguments.

I tried to do start something constructive, and asked for others to join in. Disappointing to see the lack of interest, but continued conflict and random rants.

 

[Sherman20]

It's an interesting statistic but it doesn't really paint a clear picture. For instance Duke's first line they went 2/6 in the top 100 offers. How many guys did they want to take? Were some of those offers conditional? They could have gotten there top 2 choices who were both top 15 players and they get a 33% rating when in reality the class was a big win. Or they could have gotten the 2 lowest rated guys who were options C for them. Again we have no idea how many open ships they had.

I think you can see where a team like SU or Duke (Who don't throw out a million offers) have missed on there primary targets based on the overall number of top 100 offers. If you are taking only 2 or 3 top 100 guys but offered 10+ you likely missed on at least a couple plan A guys. A team like NcSt under Godfried is almost like a throw away score for this stat because they are offering a 5th of the top 100 every season which is ridiculous.

The one thing that this shows clearly is that SU didn't get any of the kids we initially had as option A for 2017. In a class where we basically needed to bring in players at every position we probably missed on option A and B for all of them. We offered 12, where involved with even more that we didn't offer and wound up with none. I actually feel like we scrambled beautifully to wind up with what we did. It could have been much worse the way things were headed. But we were certainly scrambling, no doubt about it.

Brissett is the player of the year in Canada and simply isn't rated in the states. He's a top 50 kid if he played in the states.
Sidibe is a kid that is just coming into his own. I thought he was rated by some services in the top 100 but I could be wrong. He's a good fit for our system and should be able to provide minutes right away.
Washington was on the all Canadian 1st team with Brissett so he's no slouch and he seems like one of those kids we will be thrilled with in a couple of years.
Dolezaj would have been a top 100 guy in the states no question. Where in the top 100 is hard to say but he's a legit talent.

Add Thorpe and Hughes and we plugged some holes very well for the 2017 and 2018 seasons.

2 4 7 's own internal rankings (done by Jerry Meyer) have Brissett, Sidibe and Dolezaj as top 100 guys. JB is right that the Canadian guys often don't get evaluated by the services or don't have proper opportunities for evaluation. And most of these recruiting services don't know anything about Dolezaj. I trust the staff on him, though he's probably going to take some time to adjust to playing over here.

 

[JazzNC]

At their request, this network is being blocked from this site.'s own internal rankings (done by Jerry Meyer) have Brissett, Sidibe and Dolezaj as top 100 guys. JB is right that the Canadian guys often don't get evaluated by the services or don't have proper opportunities for evaluation. And most of these recruiting services don't know anything about Dolezaj. I trust the staff on him, though he's probably going to take some time to adjust to playing over here.

I'm not sure what you mean... who is making what request, and who is this network? 2 4 7?

I agree that 2 4 7 may not evaluate Canadian or foreign talent adequately. I'd welcome someone using another site. It seems that many have a tendency to cherry pick. If 2 4 7 ranked our recruits the highest that would be the one we'd be using all the time.

 

[iommi]

I appreciate the effort that went into doing this but as jordoo pointed out, the numbers are skewed since we have foreign players on the team and the site you used has completely different rankings from other sites (obviously).

I'm not sure what you mean by using this thread to find and discuss solutions to our recruiting issues. All of the discussion that you call conflict and uneducated rants (that's a fair criticism in many cases)... Isn't some of that discussion about figuring out why we have slipped in recruiting? Why would this thread be any different from all the other ones? I'm not sure what you hope to differentiate this thread from the myriad of other ones.

 

[JazzNC]

I appreciate the effort that went into doing this but as jordoo pointed out, the numbers are skewed since we have foreign players on the team and the site you used has completely different rankings from other sites (obviously).

I'm not sure what you mean by using this thread to find and discuss solutions to our recruiting issues. All of the discussion that you call conflict and uneducated rants (that's a fair criticism in many cases)... Isn't some of that discussion about figuring out why we have slipped in recruiting? Why would this thread be any different from all the other ones? I'm not sure what you hope to differentiate this thread from the myriad of other ones.

I gave one example. Someone ranted on about how a new coach wouldn't do any bettter and that those who think so are fools. I'm suggesting that instead of writing that do some research to see if the data you find supports the claim?

How are other schools (similar in stature to ours) faring after replacing a great coach? I'd say Sean Miller has done pretty well at Arizona. But that's just one example.

I guess I'm saying do some research when posting. I'm not implying that my research is infallible, far from it. But I'm trying to create a movement away from the complain/defend trend, most of which is pure conjecture.