As we get closer to the 2016 class beginning their senior season, I'll take a stab at 5 overrated prospects and 11 underrated 2016 prospects (Link to the rankings:
2016 HoopGurlz Recruiting Rankings - espnW 100 - ESPN)
The overrated is a little bit harder, all 5 of my selections have transferred, but I just felt they haven't really lived up to their hype. Some of them are solid role players though.
Amber Melgoza from Washington isn't even on this top 100 list. She's better than several of the players ranked in the top 20. Recruiting is definitely an inexact science.
If you re-ranked the class I suspect the top 15 would look like this:
With all due respect to
@DaBball ,
@nwhoopfan , and
@SCspur (and other BYers who posted in this thread), I find the discussion of "underrated" and "overrated" a bit misleading, in the sense of examining the HS Class of 2016 rankings (largely completed in the fall of 2015, after the previous HS season and summer AAU events) and looking at them through 2019 lenses.
Recruiting rankings involve evaluations of where a player
IS at that particular moment in time, in terms of skills and abilities -- with some measure/allowance for potential (e.g., an uber-athlete who is just getting by on instinct and athleticism, having a metric to assess potential to correct shooting form, etc.).
Recruiting rankings CANNOT predict how a player -- likely 17 years old at the time of the last major evaluation and the rankings release before the fall signing period -- will respond to a particular coach, will adjust to college, will interact with her teammates, will overcome injuries, etc. It is a present sense impression assessment with a certain metric component for future potential; it is not a be-all, end-all prediction of college performance, nor can it be.
I do not believe that a player cannot be considered "overrated" simply because she was a very highly ranked player in the fall 2015 rankings but did not become a superstar three years later while others passed her, in terms of accolades, accomplishments, etc.. It simply means that other players improved a lot more and surpassed expected performances for their respective rankings. "Living up/not living up to expectations for the ranking" might be a better characterization.
But looking at this nearly FOUR years later (again, focusing on the last major rating/evaluation occurring in the fall before a player's senior year), without accounting for all of the variables (and them some) that I listed above, then going back to critique the original rankings and determining who was/is "overrated" or "underrated" by the recruiting services? Sorry, I do not see the requisite foundation for such an argument/assessment.
Now, if the recruiting rating services have a player ranked fairly low but she comes into college and immediately dominates from the first day and leads her team to a top ten ranking? Given the short amount of time between the evaluation and the elite performance and how it occurred immediately to have such an impact on the program, then I would consider an evaluation as having been a "miss." I will use the example below (
which is from a prior post regarding Duke's Alana Beard and Iowa's Megan Gustafson) to illustrate my point:
There is a difference between showing up to college on dominating as a freshman (e.g., Alana Beard at Duke) and slowly developing over the years, in the course of natural player development as a result of talent and hard work.
Alana Beard was a "miss" by Blue Star, in terms of evaluating where she was at the time; she showed up and dominated the ACC from the jump. This is what Alana accomplished her rookie year:
- Earned USBWA, Sports Illustrated for Women, Sports Illustrated, CBS Sportsline and Women’s Basketball Journal National Freshman of the Year honors
- Garnered Basketball Times Freshman All-America, Kodak District II All-America, Associated Press All-America, Women’s Basketball News Service third team All-America and Women’s Basketball Journal first team Freshman All-America honors
- Selected to the West Regional All-Tournament team
- Named ACC Freshman of the Year
- Named First Team All-ACC, becoming the first freshman to ever be selected to the First Team
- Named to the All-ACC Tournament First Team
In the summer after HS and before Beard arrived at Duke, she led USA Basketball Women’s Junior World Championship Team to a 5-0 record and the gold medal, averaging 15.4 points and 4.4 rebounds. In other words, Blue Star had her ranked very low, but it was clear before she even started college that BS's ranking was, well, BS.
Gustafson averaged 10.7 ppg and 6.8 rpg her first year and was named to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team. But she was not the best player on her team (Ally Disterhoft had that honor for 2015-16; Disterhoft was also named Second Team All-Big Ten that year), nor was she the best freshmen in the Big Ten (Nebraska's Jessica Shepard earned that honor and Shephard and Penn State's Teniya Page were the only two unanimous selections to the Big Ten All-Freshman Team). And in terms of immediate impact, the Big Ten comparable player to the ACC's Alana Beard was Ohio State's Jantel Lavender, who became the first Big Ten player, male or female, to be named the Big Ten Player of the Year four times (winning the coaches' award, the media award, or both) and the only women’s basketball player in a Power Five conference to accomplish that feat.
Gustafson improved her sophomore season and was named to the 2016-17 All-Big Ten First Team (both coaches and media), as was teammate Ally Disterhoft. But neither was a unanimous selection to either First Team (coaches or media); Maryland's Shatori Walker-Kimbrough and Brionna Jones, Michigan State's Tori Jankoska, and Ohio State's Kelsey Mitchell were the only unanimous selections for both (with Mitchell winning POY).
Gustafson really improved by the team her junior year rolled around and turned into a dominating offensive force around the rim. But to say she was a recruiting "miss" is a bit difficult for me, only because she accomplished this a few years after the fact, under the tutelage of college coaches, thousands of hours of workouts, etc. The difference with Beard is that Alana was dominating USA Basketball before she started college, then went on to tear up the ACC during her first year.
