mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-14-20 08:22 AM - Post#308963
In response to mobrien
Justice was also Top 75 at 247/Scout at the time but finished the year around 125. So for now Lesmond is the highest-rated recruit at any site other than maybe Chris Lewis at ESPN (he was in the 60s there).
As for wings, I’d throw in Tretout as well, and Sakota is a good enough shooter to play off the ball. I don’t know what Harvard will do from here, but I don’t think it really has to add anything in this class. Unless you believe that the injury luck is going to continue, having this year’s sheer amount of talent would have been a real problem to manage if everyone could have played. So, I think the recent grad class of seven won’t be something Harvard duplicates (unless it has a terrible run of recruiting like it did over a couple classes).
|
Noah Friedman
Freshman
Posts: 34
Age: 25
Reg: 01-19-20
|
06-14-20 09:33 AM - Post#308967
In response to mrjames
In my opinion this years team could be very talented and very good but 2021 is the year where I think we have the potential to be ranked highly. We would have this top recruit, Ledlum would be a junior, kirkwood a senior, and all the freshman would be sophomores. Also if we got Gabe Dorsey we would be so stacked. Thoughts?
|
mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
2021 Recruiting
06-14-20 10:42 AM - Post#308969
In response to Noah Friedman
The expected rotation of Haskett, Kirkwood, Ledlum, Djuricic, Forbes, Sakota, Tretout and Catchings would be a solid Ivy group, but the success of the 20-21 team will come down to the freshmen. Harvard's two biggest question marks are point guard and rim protection.
At PG, Haskett/Sakota/Tretout could *cover* it, but you really need a true PG to step up. Could be Freedman coming off of injury, but Nelson seems to be the potential four-year guy in the ilk of Brandyn and Siyani. If he can even duplicate Brandyn's freshman year - much less Siyani's - Harvard will be in great shape.
As for bigs, Harvard doesn't need as much offense as Chris Lewis provided, but losing two Top 100 block rate guys is tough. Forbes actually posted a BETTER block rate, but didn't quite have enough minutes to qualify to be ranked. Ajogbor seems like the guy who could step in immediately and help Forbes replace what the team lost defensively with Lewis and Baker gone, but do they both have enough offense to make the usage rates work. Baker and Lewis were very different offensively, which made it possible to play them together, but Forbes and Ajogbor seem very alike, which could make it almost impossible to play them at the same time.
Moving forward, I still don't really see wings as the issue, but we'll see what direction Harvard decides to go.
|
Noah Friedman
Freshman
Posts: 34
Age: 25
Reg: 01-19-20
|
06-14-20 12:29 PM - Post#308978
In response to mrjames
How about the potential of the 21-22 team. That team I see more potential
|
mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
2021 Recruiting
06-15-20 09:07 AM - Post#309013
In response to Noah Friedman
Still lots of question marks to project out that far. Definite reasons to believe that team can be great, but it requires projecting a lot onto the 2019 freshmen and the incoming 2020 and 2021 classes.
The positive is that the numbers are in Harvard’s favor. While we don’t know *which* players will be great and which may not live up to the recruiting buzz, we do know that with X rolls of dice on 3-4 star players, you are likely to get Y contributors/stars. The question is going to be whether those players come through in key areas of need (PG and bigs).
Then, there’s obviously injuries too, which should give any Harvard fan chills right now.
I do think that there are fewer question marks surrounding the 2021 class than the 2020 class, so I think you’ll get a good sense next season as to whether 2021-22 will be another relative peak.
|
pennhoops
Postdoc
Posts: 2470
Reg: 11-21-04
|
2021 Recruiting
06-15-20 11:16 AM - Post#309021
In response to mrjames
lesmond is going to be a monster. would have been a star at a high major.
Edited by pennhoops on 06-15-20 11:16 AM. Reason for edit: No reason given.
|
PennFan10
Postdoc
Posts: 3590
Reg: 02-15-15
|
06-15-20 01:30 PM - Post#309041
In response to pennhoops
Here is a local article from Chicago area by Joe Henricksen, who is widely considered the expert in Illinois hoops. Also some good quotes from Lesmond on why he chose Harvard:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/6/13/21290226/lo ...
|
palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32916
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-15-20 02:52 PM - Post#309044
In response to PennFan10
"when Harvard shows interest, you can’t ignore it. The Harvard name carries a lot of weight. I also looked at the big picture after basketball, the best opportunities for me after basketball. I get the best of both worlds at Harvard.â€
|
pennhoops
Postdoc
Posts: 2470
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-16-20 09:51 AM - Post#309060
In response to palestra38
not to turn the harvard board penn-centric but its pretty obvious that hyp have left us far behind in recruiting and the gap is only widening
|
palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32916
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-16-20 10:59 AM - Post#309065
In response to pennhoops
Don't know so much about Princeton but H-Y? Surely.
|
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6418
Reg: 11-22-04
|
06-17-20 12:43 PM - Post#309133
In response to pennhoops
I’m not so sure the gap is widening. Penn got the most win shares in the league from freshmen last year. More than twice what Harvard got, despite Ledlum playing a lot. Penn got the most win shares from freshman the prior year as well. Harvard has 3 very good recruits coming in this year, Penn has 2. I’m not seeing a huge difference.
Lesmond is a huge get for the league, but they aren’t bringing in guys like that every year, and, as mike James pointed out, Chris Lewis was similarly ranked. Harvard is getting just about everyone against us head to head, but we have been doing enough to stay with them over the last 4 years. I’m not ready to concede this year until we see who we get. I predict that we will get a big man who is a higher level basketball recruit than Pitcher. I doubt we’ll get anyone approaching Lesmond, but we don’t have to in order to compete with them on the court.
|
palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32916
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-17-20 12:55 PM - Post#309135
In response to SomeGuy
We're not saying they are recruiting necessarily better players but that they are out-recruiting us for players we both deem desirable. That's likely but not necessarily bad for us in terms of titles. We had a very good class last year and we really don't know how good Harvard's class was given how many veterans they had. But let's face it--just about anyone they want who comes to our league they get.
|
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6418
Reg: 11-22-04
|
06-17-20 01:40 PM - Post#309142
In response to palestra38
Yes, I agree with all that. Just disagree with the idea that HYP have left us behind and that the gap is widening. Harvard has been getting whoever they want for years — long before Donahue started. This started while Miller was Penn’s coach. We haven’t gotten a player that Harvard admits they wanted since Rosen.
The Yale comparison is more complicated, and Slatjchert and Laczkowski indicate it may be turning back (probably too soon to tell there). And while we have been killing them in freshman win shares, I don’t think the stat is as meaningful for Yale because Jones basically never starts freshmen. Mahoney may have been the best freshman in the league this year, but that won’t be clear until this coming season, because he didn’t get the opportunities that Dingle, Ledlum, and Martz did.
|
mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-17-20 01:56 PM - Post#309143
In response to SomeGuy
I'd caution against using Win Shares in a predictive sense. They are extremely useful in a descriptive sense (what happened), but since they are a counting stat, not a rate stat, they tend to be heavily biased by playing time. Also, they are specific to the team around the player - that is, if you can play as a 15% usage guy because the team, that season, has a couple high usage guys, you might not be able to do so if it doesn't have such players the following year.
For the 2019 entering class, Harvard played freshmen for a total of 59% of team minutes. Penn played freshmen for 165% of team minutes or nearly 3X. The Quakers earned 4.6 WS as a frosh class. Harvard's frosh accumulated 2.3 WS or roughly half in about 35% of the playing time.
While Penn's 2018 entering class did out-earn Harvard's 3.5 to 3.0 (in slightly less overall playing time to boot), it was a team that had its best freshman at T-10 in Win Shares that actually earned the most as a sophomore class (Princeton). And Brown, Harvard and Princeton were the three teams that had multiple sophomores with 1.5 win shares or more this season (if Wang had been healthy, he'd have been there, but that would still have given Penn just one).
Better predictive metrics of future success are offensive rating combined with usage as well as focusing on stickier stats (rebound rates, assist rates, block rates) and fading stats that can have short-run fluctuations or tend to improve over time (shooting stats, turnover rates).
P38 is right that Harvard (and I'll add Yale) are winning every meaningful recruiting battle over Penn right now. Over the past four years, Penn is almost as many Ivy wins away from Harvard (-9) as it is ahead of Brown (+10), and without the 2018 title run in a relatively weak edition of this league, those numbers would be -9 and +2.
It may very well be fair to say that the gap hasn't widened enough to become a crisis yet, but to deny that the gap is *widening* seems to be willful ignorance.
|
Mike Porter
Postdoc
Posts: 3619
Loc: Los Angeles, CA
Reg: 11-21-04
|
2021 Recruiting
06-17-20 02:19 PM - Post#309147
In response to mrjames
Harvard is obviously killing it in 2021 recruiting by landing high quality kids early, and hats off to them. They continue to bring the highest ranked kids into the league, and I don't see Penn landing anyone at the recruiting rankings of Lesmond, but we are still actively recruiting a lot of high quality players (even ranked ones).
I'm going to reserve judgement on 2021 until we see where Penn lands. If it is March/April next year and we've missed on all our top targets, then we can go into crisis mode, but for now it is wait and see mode. I'm hopeful the staff can close on some of the top kids we are involved with, so let's find out how it plays out.
|
HARVARDDADGRAD
Postdoc
Posts: 2702
Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
|
06-17-20 04:11 PM - Post#309161
In response to Mike Porter
Harvard has to be very happy with Amaker's recruiting and performance. Note that the big fish have still been just misses - Wendell Carter, Mohammed Bamba, Dinwiddie, Falzon, etc.
Had key players been healthy, this would be a completely different conversation - and decade.
Regardless, Penn is getting good players. Basketball is an interesting sport in that regard. You don't need the depth that football and baseball squads do. A couple of studs and a few role players and you have a competitive squad. Throw in injuries, and you have the Ivy league.
|
SomeGuy
Professor
Posts: 6418
Reg: 11-22-04
|
06-17-20 05:07 PM - Post#309169
In response to mrjames
Most of that is fair. Totally agree that freshman win shares only tells us so much. Obviously evaluation of performance of a recruiting class doesn’t stop after freshman year— we will get lots more information. My point with my win shares, total wins, and NCAA appearances arguments isn’t to say that Penn has actually been better than Harvard over the last four years. My point is just that Penn is performing well enough to stay in the conversation. And that is while losing out to Harvard for recruits seemingly whenever we go head to head.
In terms of what may be less fair in your arguments, Penn’s best year is part of the record of the last four years. I think the fairest evaluation of the teams takes all the games into account — more information is always good. I don’t think we should be cutting the data set and suggesting that some results are more indicative than others. In regard to the sophs, I think you may be underestimating Bryce Washington, who was a high ORAT player as a freshman and also likely earned a medical redshirt last year (and was likely playing hurt before shutting it down).
Is the sky about to fall on Penn? Maybe. But to me the sky doesn’t really look much different from the way it looked coming into the season 4 years ago. So I’m not ready to run around yelling that the sky is falling. The last four years have shown that we can compete with Harvard, even while losing every recruiting battle to them. I wouldn’t have thought that possible 4 years ago, so Steve has at least convinced me of that much. Imagine what happens if we start winning some of the recruiting battles.
|
mrjames
Professor
Posts: 6062
Loc: Montclair, NJ
Reg: 11-21-04
|
06-18-20 09:56 AM - Post#309187
In response to SomeGuy
Steve has certainly stabilized the program, keeping Penn in the 125-175 range over the past four years. Even being a pessimist about the Quakers this year, I'm thinking 200-225ish, which would still be much better as a "bad" year than the median years for Miller and Allen.
I want to be clear that I think Steve can keep Penn in that range, maybe not every year, but generally. That being said, every season but 2017-18, the Ivy champion has been in the Top 100 and usually well into the Top 100 and even Top 50. Certainly 125-175 has been good enough to be in the conversation, but that's a conversation that relied upon Harvard and Yale being hurt by injuries and early Draft entry. Maybe it's a controversial statement, but if Harvard and Yale had seen a full complement of players on the floor, whether or not Penn would have been in the conversation would be more in question.
And that's important, because Harvard and Yale are continuing to recruit at a level that put them in a position to have the great years that never quite materialized due to those losses. If both can get a clean run with their current talent, I suspect it'll take more of a 75-125 range to stay in the conversation, and I don't see Penn's recruiting being good enough to get there.
I didn't intend to cherry pick by excluding 2018, which is why I included the numbers with 2018 that showed Penn being about as far from Brown as it was from Harvard. I did want to provide that context, though, because 2018 was an anomalous year being the only one in the past 10 where the league was not Top 20. 2017, 2019 and 2020 were far more representative of what the league has been this past decade and what it should continue to be, and in those years, Penn has struggled mightily.
|
palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32916
Reg: 11-21-04
|
2021 Recruiting
06-18-20 10:21 AM - Post#309190
In response to mrjames
Without starting our argument up anew, if Yale can essentially do what Harvard is doing when spending a whole lot less on the program, it's not so much a "unicorn" as whether there is a level playing field. BTW, I think Penn will be a whole lot better this year than you predict.
|
HARVARDDADGRAD
Postdoc
Posts: 2702
Loc: New Jersey
Reg: 01-21-14
|
06-18-20 10:34 AM - Post#309195
In response to palestra38
Looking forward to seeing Brown and maybe evern Dartmouth at Lavietes in March. Good for the league.
|
