Overview:
Basketball recruiting is much different than Football for a number of reasons. First, each recruiting class is 20-25 kids vs 2-3 kids. This means you are canvassing a MUCH higher volume of players, and can make MANY more mistakes. Also, despite the rise of "summer passing leagues" recently, the lack of the AAU circuit has traditionally made prospect camps a HUGE deal because there is much less competition between elite recruits because of the simple lack of volume of games annually(10-13 football vs 50+ for a basketball player). This leads to an atmosphere where there are a TON of diamonds in the rough and a TON of busts at high profile programs.
Cliff notes on STARS System*
1. What the stars mean in football?: There are two main components of scouting high school football players. First, what is their Talent/Skill/Size level relative to postion? Second, how "college ready" are they? Typically the 5-star players have both the ideal mix of both. This is why FL Gators/Texas play 15 true freshman a year. Great Talent, Physically ready to play as a freshman. From there, the concept is that you reduce stars based on either talent level or physical readiness. As far as our recruiting, we are hoping to find the kids who have Great Talent, but need a couple years of seasoning/weight room. A couple examples: Sio Moore, Darius Butler, Jordan Todman. Also, we try to find the Good Talent, Physically ready group. I would categorize Moe Petrus, Scott Lutrus.
2. Due to Volume of Games/Lack of AAU, scouting is very hit and miss. There are areas of the country that are well-canvassed by college coaches, scouts, websites, etc. These include most recruiting hot-beds such as the Southeast, the West coast, the mid-atlantic, and "Big-10" Land. Any prospect who does the college circuit(summer leagues, camps, etc) will be pretty accurately rated for the most part. If you see a 5-star kid from FL or CA, you can bet that kid has had a TON of eyes on him, has really performed against similar athletes, and will be somewhat accurately scouted. However, any recruit from a Non-Hotbed area who doesn't really travel all over doing passing leagues will often be summarily provided a 2-star rating as a placeholder if offered by a D-1 school. Basically that is the scout services saying: "We know someone likes him, but don't have the time/resources to investigate further. Unless "buzz" rises about the prospect, or there is some insane video of the kid on Youtube, or the kid is offered by a bigger program, that prospect will remain a 2-star throughout the process. A great example is our own LB Graham Stewart. Early in the process he was offered by UConn/BC and was a 2-3 star prospect. When Florida jumped in the mix and got an offer out to him, the scouting services took another look at the tape, considered that FLA offered, and bumped him to a 4-star. Viola! Did he improve during that time? Nope. But a kid from a "non-major" recruiting area picked up buzz, picked up BlueBlood offers, and so the services bumped his rating.
3. What does this system often miss? A couple things. First, because of teh volume, there is much less work to identify work habits/background. So you see 5-stars come in and not develop due to work-habit deficiency or character issues. Conversely you see talented but physically unprepared kids spend 3-4 years in a college weight room and become beasts like a Todman, Donald Brown, Alfred Fincher, etc,etc. Secondly, just through volume there are some kids that SHOULD HAVE been huge prospects clearly but were evaluated poorly. Look at Johnny Manziel. Kid went to all the camps, was plenty of tape, had a ton of offers. Was rated 3-stars and was the Heisman winner as a freshman. Finally, these kids are being evaluated at ages 15-17! There are some kids that are docked because they aren't in shape, or haven't grown all that they are going to grow. Just that adds so much variability that in the end it becomes a major crapshoot at some level.
4. Conclusion : If kids are rated 4-5 star, it means that there have been eyes on the kid, the kid has verifiable tools, and their success/failure is just a product of how much they want it. We Need/Want to win some of those battles. However, don't be discouraged just by seeing a two-star tag on a prospect. some of our best players have been that type that has raw tools but a lack of exposure/maturity. Ideally in our situation we would mix our choice of underrated ten(10) 2-Star or 3-Star prospects from our Major areas in New England while stealing 3-6 4-Star prospects and 1-2 5-Star players from places like FLA/OH/PA/VA/MA. We are not at that level, or have not been up to this point. But it can be realistic inside of a decade with the right coaching/conference.
Hope that helps!
