What accounts for these seemingly vast discrepancies?
- IDK but that won’t stop me from guessing.
- The rating/ranking philosophes e.g. some rating/rankings are based on projected college positions while others lean more towards how they play against current competition.
- AAU politics/affiliation e.g. EYBL (Nike) vs Adidas vs UnderArmour circuits
- Rating services affiliations e.g. (Blue Star=Belles) and ProspectsNation = Check me out show case events
- Timing e.g. one rater saw her play on her best day and the other was there on a not so good day
@CamrnCrz1974 and
@HuskyNan please chime in based on your past experiences.
@CocoHusky , I wholeheartedly agree with your post.
Earlier this year, I posted a few times in a thread about recruiting services and the factors that go into their rankings (and had a discussion with
@WBBfolllwer about the topic). Here are the links to those posts (with apologies, as the posts are extremely long and detailed:
2020/21 UConn Recruiting
New Bluestar rankings
Here is a summary of these posts and my thoughts on the matter:
--- Certain recruiting services taken into account “projected collegiate performance” or “projected development” when evaluating players. Others rank the players were they are as of the dates of the players’ respective evaluations.
--- It impossible to predict how well a player will develop under and perform for one head coach, as opposed to how she might do so under a different coach.
--- Rankings inevitably vary based on player performance, number of times seen/evaluated by the recruiter, whether evaluations were with the high school team at major tournaments (including state championships) or AAU events, etc.
--- Certain recruiting services may also consider certain factors in ranking players that other services do not include (e.g., a player's on-court demeanor, ability to be coached, interactions with teammates, etc.).
--- A few years ago, I commented about sneaker companies and two recruiting services.
- Blue Star is based in the Northeast, is sponsored by Nike, and is run by individuals with strong ties to the old Big East. Blue Star's rankings were (and still are) handled by Mike Flynn, who tended to bump up the rankings for players from the Northeast, players who attended Nike camps, and/or players who give verbal commitments to one of the old Big East schools.
- ASGR is based in the Southeast, is sponsored by adidas, and is run by individuals with strong ties to the ACC. ASGR’s rankings were handled by Mike White (White now works with Bret McCormick and others), who tended to bump the rankings for players who gave verbal commitments to ACC schools.
In any event, because there is not nearly as much money in women’s basketball recruiting as there is in men’s recruiting, players are not seen as frequently (or against other similar levels of competition) as their male counterparts. As a result, there may be some disparity in rankings from one service to another, especially if a player had subpar performances in the games that one evaluator saw, but was stellar in front of other raters.
All recruiting/rating services have had issues (not just Blue Star) in terms of having "missed" on good players. What I do not like, however, is when a few people go back to disparate a high school ranking many years later and using a player’s college performance as support for their positions. Evaluations are largely based on present performances, with subjective analysis component (and in some cases, factoring in upside/potential). But the evaluators are not supposed to be The Amazing Kreskin; they cannot make predictions the future as to how a player may develop years into the future (based on evaluations that largely occurred before players’ senior seasons).
Now, if a player comes to college (or even the summer before, with USA Basketball) and dominates from the first game and is giving immediate All-Conference and All-American performances, then a recruiting service's player ranking might have been too low (e.g., Blue Star Report and Alana Beard). But going back after four years of college and claiming that a ranking was somehow “wrong”, in my opinion, misses the point of recruiting rankings and the dozens of factors involved with a player’s collegiate development.
Finally, I believe
@HuskyNan can shed light on the years she was part of a team of evaluators for Scout (2006 for sure; not sure about other years), in terms of how talent evaluators/assessors consider some of these things. As I recall, Epiphanny Prince was widely regarded as a very talented and elite recruit with a good amount of upside, but received a slightly lower ranking/rating (#10 overall) from that Scout rating team, as a result of things like on-court attitude, ability to play team basketball, interactions with teammates/coaches, etc.
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