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Post by c4ndlelight on Dec 18, 2014 18:48:46 GMT -5
I know there's been a lot of discussion about the correlation between recruiting rankings and achievements, so thought it would be interesting to do a quick analysis.
1st Team
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 5, 6, 9, 9, 17, 32, 41, 98, UNRANKED
2nd Team
2, 2, 3, 16, 18, 26, 28, 31, 53, 77, UNRANKED, N/A - Foreign (x3)
3rd Team
1, 5, 20, 30, 40, 41, 45, 49, 80, 80, UNRANKED (x4)
Unranked players: Lowe, Bergren, Browning, Foss, K. Nelson, Rivers
11 of the 42 All-Americans were Top 5 recruits nationally (26%), so there is obviously a huge advantage to getting the highest regarded talent. Interestingly, the #4 slot (currently Abercrombie, Reinig, Courtney, Baker) recruits don't have any AAs this year, but there's obviously some good players there.
After that, the correlation really drops off. There were twice as many unranked players making All-American (6), than there were those ranked from 6-10 (3), and there were more #80s than any rank outside the Top 5. In fact, you'd expect the teens to do much better than they are, but they're getting outgunned by the 40s. Maybe this has to do with biases in AA selection over player quality (those teen-ranked players are more likely to be 2nd/3rd guns on top teams than a team's stat-hogging star), but it's interesting.
Not too much that's conclusive about this analysis, but I guess I'd take away that it obviously really helps to have a top 5-type, but there are great players with great potential all throughout the rankings.
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Post by ay2013 on Dec 18, 2014 18:54:27 GMT -5
Clearly these top recruits are SUPPOSED to be better, but it also helps that they are usually on top teams, which are usually ranked highly in the AVCA, and usually win a lot of matches, which is almost a guarantee to land multiple All American spots for their respective producers. Would Haley Eckerman be a 1st team AA if she were at Savannah State? Would Inky Ajanaku be a 1st team AA if she played for Wyoming? probably not!
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Post by c4ndlelight on Dec 18, 2014 18:56:41 GMT -5
Clearly these top recruits are SUPPOSED to be better, but it also helps that they are usually on top teams, which are usually ranked highly in the AVCA, and usually win a lot of matches, which is almost a guarantee to land multiple All American spots for their respective producers. Would Haley Eckerman be a 1st team AA if she were at Savannah State? Would Inky Ajanaku be a 1st team AA if she played for Wyoming? probably not! There are AAs from LSU (1st team), Miami, Creighton, Alabama, Oregon St. Clearly not just top teams represented... |
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Post by ay2013 on Dec 18, 2014 18:59:33 GMT -5
Clearly these top recruits are SUPPOSED to be better, but it also helps that they are usually on top teams, which are usually ranked highly in the AVCA, and usually win a lot of matches, which is almost a guarantee to land multiple All American spots for their respective producers. Would Haley Eckerman be a 1st team AA if she were at Savannah State? Would Inky Ajanaku be a 1st team AA if she played for Wyoming? probably not! There are AAs from LSU (1st team), Miami, Creighton, Alabama, Oregon St. Clearly not just top teams represented... I didn't say that. What I said was that it HELPS that they are on top teams who usually garner more All Americans because they are better teams, overall. |
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Post by blindpirate on Dec 18, 2014 21:45:38 GMT -5
Maybe the recruiting rankings are off?
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Post by c4ndlelight on Dec 18, 2014 21:50:59 GMT -5
Maybe the recruiting rankings are off? Tawa would be a millionaire if he could project for football/basketball as well as he does for volleyball. |
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Post by gogophers on Dec 19, 2014 12:56:52 GMT -5
Thanks, C4, for your homework and analysis. Some of my thoughts:
1. I've always wondered how Tawa's crew could possibly rank so many players from everywhere in the country, some still growing, all playing opponents of unknown quality. I know it's done with football and basketball recruits, but there, I would guess, you have far more scouts to do personal evaluations. I assume, therefore, that the rankers are heavily dependent on the big tournaments and on how makes the national teams and how well they do. The absolute stars will stand out, but once you get beyond them, there's a lot of guess work. And how you tell, say, 70, from 92, I have no idea.
2. 11 top fivers tells you that Tawa and crew do an exceptional job at spotting the very best. Putting aside the occasional red shirter, there are only 20 top five players out there in any given year, and in the present year, I can think of a 12th (Baker), who was injured, a 13th (Washington), who was injured for enough of the year so as not be eligible, and two others who were freshmen, the class that is usually the least represented.
3. I haven't checked, but I suspect the 6-10ers having only 3 representatives is unusual. It doesn't gibe with my recollection of my own results when I looked at the 2006-2012 AA selections a couple of years ago.
4. I think representation among the top 10ers overall is somewhat suppressed by the monopolization of top 10 recruits by Texas, PSU, and Stanford. By my count, of the 40 top ten players of the last four years, 17 are on the rosters of just those teams. Those teams get quite a few AA selections, but there is a limit. If, say, Megan Courtney were playing for, say, Illinois instead of PSU, she'd probably be a bigger deal, while still playing on a fairly big stage, and thus increase her chances for AA recognition.
This factor is particular true of the Texas roster. Believe it or not, Texas has 9--count 'em 9--top 10 players on its roster, an amount boosted by Texas getting the only two top 10 transfers of the last two years, and more than PSU and Stanford combined. The roll-call includes McCage, Dalton, Collins, Hattis, Bell, Prieto-Carame, Baker, Ogbogu, and Eckerman. Assuming 4 selections per year for Texas, that's 5 top ten players who won't be selected, but who might have shined more in a less star-crowded program.
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Post by bayarea on Dec 19, 2014 13:07:58 GMT -5
I would be curious to see how the top recruits listed as Setter/Right Sides pan out compared to the top recruits as a whole. My sense is that many of these players do well in both roles in HS and club, but on the collegiate stage, turn out not to be either ELITE RS's or ELITE setters. Including the very highly ranked Longhorn setter.
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Post by chancelucky on Dec 19, 2014 13:50:10 GMT -5
Thanks for doing this. It's fascinating. My sense is that there's really a top ten or maybe top fifteen each year. The next sixty-eighty are very good prospective college players who work out pretty much randomly once they get there. There are also maybe 6 programs that get multiple top ten recruits. It's part of why it's fun to see BYU in the final this year.
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Post by gogophers on Dec 19, 2014 14:34:22 GMT -5
Back by unpopular demand(no one has asked for it), an oldie but goodie from a thread I created in 2012. Doesn't speak to the top 5 vs. the next 5 split, but confirms the dominance of the top 10 in winning AA first team honors.
"I looked at the AA first team lists from 2006-2011, 6 years in all. Each year’s team has had 14 members since 2008; 12 before that. So we’re talking about 80 spots for those six years. Three of those spots went to Europeans who never got a prep volleyball ranking, leaving 77 to go to those who did. Of those 77, few went to lower classmen. Two freshmen won spots. (Hodge and Faucette, for the curious). For sophomores, the number of winners by year, from 2011 to 2006, working from 2011 backwards, is 3, 0, 1, 1, 1, and 5. Yes, the class of 2005 was something else. So that means 64 spots for upper classmen. For any given year, the top 10 from the senior and junior classes total, of course, just 20. So how often did the first team spot go to members of this select group of 20?
"The short answer is: very often. Here are some summary figures. I’ll mention a few names and their respective rankings, but only a few. I don’t want to just list player names and rankings, lest I give away information for which interested fans should be paying RichKern the modest fee he charges to stay in business.
"In 2011, 8 of the 14 first teamers were top 10 recruits – though to be strictly accurate, the three sophomore first teamers that year are among the 8, meaning the 20 upperclassmen accounted for 5. Another first teamer was the 11th ranked senior, making it 9 out of 14 in the top 11 of their respective classes. None of the 14 was lower than 31.
"In 2010, it was again 8 of 14 in the top 10, and indeed 5 of 14 in the top 5, with a ninth member of the team ranked 11th in her class. None of the 14 was ranked lower than 27, with one glaring exception: #72 from her class. For those who want to guess, there is a hint a few paragraphs below.
"In 2009, 8 of the 13 (the 14th spot went to a European) were in the top 8. Two others were top 20. One was ranked 30. Another was ranked 62, another outlier. I couldn’t find any ranking for the other player, not even in the 100-250 grouping listed only alphabetically by prep volleyball, which stops assigning numerical rankings after 100; but maybe I overlooked it. That player was Ashley Mass. But she was a libero, and liberos for some reason often get little notice, much less love, in the prep volleyball rankings. It wouldn’t be too surprising if a great libero was wholly overlooked in the rankings.
"In 2008, 11 of the 13 (another European accounts for the 14th spot) were ranked in the top 9—indeed, 7 were in just the top 4—and no one was lower than 25.
"In 2007, 7 of the 11 (a European accounting for the 12th spot) were from the top 4; 9 from the top 10. Another was 14, and the last spot went to an outlier: the 51st ranked senior.
"The 2006 team had three seniors (class of 2003) whose prep rankings, if any, I don’t know, because RichKern lists the rankings starting only with the entering class of 2004. Of the other 9, which again included 5 sophomores, making the pool of eligible candidates effectively the 30 top-10ers from three classes—every one was ranked no worse than 5th in her class.
"So, we have a 51, a 62, and a 72 in the group, along with Mass, who may have been excluded wholly from the top 250 of her class. Every one of the 77 slots not given to Europeans went to a player ranked no lower than 31, and a solid majority were top 10ers. Therefore, Bergsma’s first team designation, which seems assured at this point, will be a rarity, and if she is NPOY, she’ll be far and away the lowest ranked hs player to garner that honor, at least in the six years I looked at."
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Post by roy on Dec 20, 2014 3:58:29 GMT -5
I love the information you put out about the rankings. I recall a discussion on this a while back and I think I contributed to it. I looked at some of the information more by the recruits and I actually found my list and updated it. Looking at 2004-2011 (in theory, all the recruits who have used up their eligibility), 47 of the 80 players who were top 10 in their class earned AA honors (first, second, or third team). Of those who still have eligibility in 2012-2014 classes, 11 of 30 have already earned AA honors.
For the top player in her respective class, everyone except Fonoimoana (2010) and Washington (2014) have been on an AA team. Every player, except those two and McCage (2012) have been first team AA. And every player, with the exception of Florida's Murphy has been to the Final Four.
And as best as I can tell by this list, of the 44 FF spots from 2004-2014, only 8 have had been to the Final Four without a top 10 player on the team: Minnesota 2004, Santa Clara and Tennessee 2005, Cal 2007, Florida State 2011, Oregon and Michigan 2012, and BYU 2014. Of course, Cal and Florida State had international players on their team who didn't have a ranking.
I'm kind of torn on what this all means. It's hard to overcome the quality of recruits that are going to teams like Stanford or Penn State, especially when recruits are going their en masse. But we are seeing teams without a top 10 recruit making it pretty far in the tournament, just not as regularly as those with the top 10 recruits heading to their school.
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Post by mikegarrison on Dec 20, 2014 4:04:17 GMT -5
Clearly these top recruits are SUPPOSED to be better, but it also helps that they are usually on top teams, which are usually ranked highly in the AVCA, and usually win a lot of matches, which is almost a guarantee to land multiple All American spots for their respective producers. Would Haley Eckerman be a 1st team AA if she were at Savannah State? Would Inky Ajanaku be a 1st team AA if she played for Wyoming? probably not! There are AAs from LSU (1st team), Miami, Creighton, Alabama, Oregon St. Clearly not just top teams represented... Maybe not top 10, but those are all tournament teams, aren't they? |
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Post by gogophers on Dec 20, 2014 9:41:24 GMT -5
And as best as I can tell by this list, of the 44 FF spots from 2004-2014, only 8 have had been to the Final Four without a top 10 player on the team: Minnesota 2004, Santa Clara and Tennessee 2005, Cal 2007, Florida State 2011, Oregon and Michigan 2012, and BYU 2014. Of course, Cal and Florida State had international players on their team who didn't have a ranking. I'm kind of torn on what this all means. It's hard to overcome the quality of recruits that are going to teams like Stanford or Penn State, especially when recruits are going their en masse. But we are seeing teams without a top 10 recruit making it pretty far in the tournament, just not as regularly as those with the top 10 recruits heading to their school. You mention Minn in 2004. I'm pretty sure it had two top 10 players, Kelly Bowman, who was a first team AA that year, and Meredith Nelson, who became an AA later on. What does it all mean? It seems to mean that Texas, Stanford, and PSU are, barring very unlikely (though not unheard of) early upsets, guarantied to make the elite 8, that other teams who are not quite in their league in grabbing top 10 recruits, but still pretty good, i.e., Washington, Nebraska, Florida, USC, Cal, and Minnesota (and now Wisconsin seems to have displaced Minn.) have an excellent shot at the elite 8, and everyone else, including those bouyed by a particularly good (for them) recruiting class, fight for the few other spots left. Occasionally, it really is david v. goliath, which is one reason I found NC v. Texas this year such an exciting match. Texas has 9 top 10 players on its roster v. NC, which has, as far as I know, zero players in the top 50 (although an excellent foreign libero), and yet the play was surprisingly even. BYU, tall as it is, is another david. ISU has done well with decent recruiting classes by most people's standards, although filled with players that the big 3 would never even consider. |
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