MaxPreps?

[diggerfoot]

I don't get too excited about this rating service or that, this All American roster or that, but the Collier article that referenced her as a 1st team MaxPrep All American leads to a lot of questions for me. Once again I don't know how reliable MaxPreps or any of them are, but consider the following.

Sadie Edwards was mentioned as a 5th team MaxPreps, the only one from our recruiting class of that year mentioned in the article. Her being the only mention is not surprising: Nurse is Canadian; Ekmark is home-schooled; and Williams was injured. Being a 5th team implies a top 25 player (is it 5 per team for MaxPreps?) out of all high school candidates, not just the senior class. I'll take that.

It also means that Durr and Brown, both on the third team, are top 15 players out of all high school players, and they are only juniors. Good reason to expect they would be first team for MaxPreps next year.

Yet Samuelson and Collier already are first team as juniors! Samuelson is not a surprise; we've been hearing much about her: Samuelson + Durr = top two in the class seems to be a mantra around here. However, Collier's highest rating is 4 outside of the MaxPreps teams, while Durr is "only" third team (this year) according to MaxPreps. This leads me to questions about both the validity of MaxPreps and if Collier is really that extraordinarily good. Going 25 for 27 in her "Final Four" tournament certainly seems extraordinary.

 

[UcMiami]

Interesting comparison, and I found the Max Preps article interesting for the same reason. I have no idea who prepares those things and how that process goes. I take all the HS evaluations with a grain of salt. The evaluation of D1 is pretty spotty and by college you are down to 343 schools. HS where players are still growing and maturing is a universe so broad and populated with such an wide range of ability within both teammates and opponents that evaluations are pretty tough. People may complain about USA team 'politics' but I actually think they do a good job of identifying a pool of players for trials. When they identify 30+ players to invite to trials and end up selecting 2 non-invitees in the top 12 I think it points to the issues involved for everyone.