mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
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03-24-21 02:22 PM - Post#322501
In response to mrjames
So, finally got to do a deep dive on the recruiting classes to bring my dataset up to date.
Some interesting tidbits:
- The 2018 class grades out as the best class league-wide for the Ivy in the recruiting ranking era, narrowly edging the 2016 class. That's a little surprising looking at the early production from that class, but here were the top players from that class (average rating and all-time rank in parens):
1. Jaelin (4.0, #2)
2. Kirkwood (3.8, #4)
3. Freedman (3.6, #7)
4. Ellis (3.2, #15)
5. Cotton (2.7, #33)
6. Kelly (2.6, #37)
7. Wang (2.5, #42)
8. Forbes (2.4, #50)
9. Samuels (2.4, #51)
10. Slajchert (1.8, #98)
Now, Freedman and Wang were injured last year, and we kinda knew Kelly's and Cotton's recruiting ratings were more a vestige of where he stood earlier in the process, so some of this is the 2018 class not being quite as strong as it was rated, but some of it was injuries. All this is to say, though, that there's a talented senior class coming back.
- It's getting a little harder to use recruiting rankings, as more and more of them seem to be focusing less and less outside the top, say, 300 or so. There are still some notable high ranking recruits in the 2019-2021 classes, but there just seems to be far less in the middle. For instance, from 2010 to 2018, we averaged, league-wide, just five recruits a year (and a max of 8 in any one year) that got zero mention at any recruiting site. In 2019, that ballooned to 12 and is sitting at 20 for 2020 and 19 for 2021. Now, there are a lot of reasons why I see that as a recruiting outlet change versus a talent change (anecdotally, our recruiting has gotten deeper as a league recently; static sites like NERR show us as having nabbed a similar number or more high ranking recruits there versus previous years, etc.).
The good news is that it's not really a problem for judging recruits, however. That's because we generally only saw big differences in expected performance from the top echelon of recruits, which are still getting graded as usual. Beyond that level it became more of a numbers game, where just having more D1 recruits makes it more likely that some will hit.
At any rate, here are the top 2019-2021 recruits:
1) Ledlum (3.4, #11)
2) MLL (3.4, #12)
3) Hemmings (3.2, #15)
4) Ajogbor (3.2, #15)
5) Tretout (3.0, #22)
6) Brayboy (2.8, #28)
7) Cowan (2.7, #33)
8) Simon (2.6, #37)
9) Hooks (2.4, #51)
10) Nelson (2.4, #51)
11) Pitcher (2.4, #51)
12) Owusu-Anane (2.4, #51)
13) Basa Ama (2.2, #64)
14) Lesmond (2.0, #71)
15) Wojcik (1.9, #80)
16) Jarvis (1.8, #91)
Just outside the Top 100: Sakota, Mahoney, Knowling, Robledo, O'Neil, Langborg
One thing that struck me was how wide the representation went. Six schools have at least two players in the Top 100 between 2018 and 2021.
Next year, 26 of the Top 100 all time Ivy recruits will be playing and 33 of the Top 150. There's a lot of talent in this league. Will be interesting to see how it all comes together.
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