Stanford's Incoming Class

[Icebear]

I think some of those folks are talking about Stanford this year, not long term. I do expect this to be a transitional year.

 

[UcMiami]

Stanford is certainly not going to fall off the map and I haven't heard anyone say that, but Chiney was a huge part of their success last year (and was a huge success as a rookie in the WNBA.) I think #10 is probably a good estimate of where they are likely to be ranked by the end of the year. They have good talent and a very good coach, but they have run out of 'O sisters' to lead them. And they are likely to face stiffer competition in the Pac so they will likely have a few more losses so their ranking will suffer some.

Nice analysis, except when you turn it around and look at Uconn - Uconn played a total of six players in the FF with four others averaging 1 minute apiece, and the sixth player averaging 16 minutes and 6.5 points. And Uconn was winning those games by 20+ points for most of the second half. You play your best players as long as they can go when you are losing or when the score is tight, so ...
Edit - it is not surprising that the Stanford bench was very short in the final two games, tat is what happens in the NCAAs.

 

[sofrito]

I'm not sure where Stanford ends up but I do agree that recruiting has taken a dip. ND and Louisville (and of course UCONN) seem to be recruiting consistently the best the past few years. Probably the next level down is South Carolina, UCLA, Duke, Tennessee, and Texas.

Actually in hindsight, I'd have to put L'ville in the 2nd tier as they only got one boffo class from 2015, prior to that it was average. Looking at the teams with the # of consensus top 10 kids in the past 4 years...

UCONN - 6
Duke - 6
Texas - 5
ND - 3
Tenn - 3
UCLA - 2
South Carolina - 2

And there are a bunch who have only 1 obviously as there are a grand total of 40 top 10 kids in 4 years and I only accounted for 27...

I agree that the teams that get the elite players will generally be most likely to compete for the FF/Championship. However, my cut off would be top 3 or top 4 rather than top ten. What I do not understand is how you got your numbers. I interpret consensus to mean that some set of the rating services all agree that a particular player is of top ten status. Over the past 4 years(2011 thru 2014 inclusive), the most recognizable services with publicly available data were ASGR, BS and HG. If you look at Duke, only one player fits that definition (E Williams) now that Alexis Jones has transferred. Also, I only count 3 for CT (KLM, BS and MJ). Also during that time frame, there were only 23 or 24 (rather than 40) consensus top 10 players once again using my definition of consensus. Of those, at least 4 will not play this year (Forthan, Jones, De Shields and Russell).