In the interest of sparking discussion about something other than the awful, un-killable Scalia thread, I thought I'd share an interesting trend in our MBB recruiting.
For programs of Mason's current stature, recruiting often is about being able to find undervalued talent and secure it before higher-profile schools start sniffing around.
That got me thinking about the book Moneyball and how Michael Lewis explained the concept as basically exploiting the inefficiencies in any system.
I think our staff has spotted one: the public high school system.
It sounds somewhat counterintuitive because the vast majority of American children will graduate from a public school, but in terms of basketball recruiting, public schools in many cases have become undervalued as sources of major D-I talent.
The perception these days is if you're an elite talent, you need to go play for a private school and a shoe company-sponsored AAU program because the competition is so much better.
While that may be true overall, that stereotype has placed a premium on those players. There are so many coaches recruiting those kids, and so many websites tracking the recruiting activity, it has become basically impossible to find under-the-radar prospects who are good enough to play on our level and would be appreciative to get an offer from a school like Mason.
Consider a kid like Otis Livingston. If he had played at Roselle Catholic with Isaiah Briscoe, he would've been seen by hundreds of the same coaches who flocked to New Jersey to recruit Briscoe.
No way Otis stays under the radar in that scenario; chances are a bottom-tier P5 school (say Rutgers) likes him enough to offer and he's gone before our staff even has a chance.
Instead, he's all-state at Linden HS and his offers are so weak, he's seriously thinking about taking a prep year before Mason swoops in and signs him late in his senior year.
Consider that, in DP's first two recruiting classes, he has signed the following kids from public high schools: Livingston, Abram, Boyd, Newman, Kier and Temara.
Grayer, Dixon and Murrell were all public school kids, too, before spending 1 year apiece at IMG.
What do all of these kids have in common: None of them had what I'd consider better than "meh" offers.
Now we obviously don't know how they're gonna pan out. It's still early in the process. Maybe like Billy Beane's Oakland teams, we won't wind up winning anything more than a couple division (in our case, conference) titles.
But I think there is a lesson to be learned from what happened with our recruiting during the Larranaga years. We went to the Final 4 with a bunch of kids nobody wanted, then that helped us get in the door with higher-rated kids who previously never would've given us the time of day.
Only, some of those higher-rated kids turned out to not actually be better basketball players than what our staff was already recruiting.
Our current staff is in with some very good local private school kids in the 2017 class -- kids like Eddie Scott from Gonzaga who plays with a high-profile AAU program and thus now has offers from Dayton and URI, among others.
If we can sign a kid like that, great. But we are also recruiting some very talented public school kids in the 2017 class who might turn out to be even better in college.
Hopefully the staff doesn't stop mining that undervalued territory once we're back winning and going to the dance on a regular basis.
For programs of Mason's current stature, recruiting often is about being able to find undervalued talent and secure it before higher-profile schools start sniffing around.
That got me thinking about the book Moneyball and how Michael Lewis explained the concept as basically exploiting the inefficiencies in any system.
I think our staff has spotted one: the public high school system.
It sounds somewhat counterintuitive because the vast majority of American children will graduate from a public school, but in terms of basketball recruiting, public schools in many cases have become undervalued as sources of major D-I talent.
The perception these days is if you're an elite talent, you need to go play for a private school and a shoe company-sponsored AAU program because the competition is so much better.
While that may be true overall, that stereotype has placed a premium on those players. There are so many coaches recruiting those kids, and so many websites tracking the recruiting activity, it has become basically impossible to find under-the-radar prospects who are good enough to play on our level and would be appreciative to get an offer from a school like Mason.
Consider a kid like Otis Livingston. If he had played at Roselle Catholic with Isaiah Briscoe, he would've been seen by hundreds of the same coaches who flocked to New Jersey to recruit Briscoe.
No way Otis stays under the radar in that scenario; chances are a bottom-tier P5 school (say Rutgers) likes him enough to offer and he's gone before our staff even has a chance.
Instead, he's all-state at Linden HS and his offers are so weak, he's seriously thinking about taking a prep year before Mason swoops in and signs him late in his senior year.
Consider that, in DP's first two recruiting classes, he has signed the following kids from public high schools: Livingston, Abram, Boyd, Newman, Kier and Temara.
Grayer, Dixon and Murrell were all public school kids, too, before spending 1 year apiece at IMG.
What do all of these kids have in common: None of them had what I'd consider better than "meh" offers.
Now we obviously don't know how they're gonna pan out. It's still early in the process. Maybe like Billy Beane's Oakland teams, we won't wind up winning anything more than a couple division (in our case, conference) titles.
But I think there is a lesson to be learned from what happened with our recruiting during the Larranaga years. We went to the Final 4 with a bunch of kids nobody wanted, then that helped us get in the door with higher-rated kids who previously never would've given us the time of day.
Only, some of those higher-rated kids turned out to not actually be better basketball players than what our staff was already recruiting.
Our current staff is in with some very good local private school kids in the 2017 class -- kids like Eddie Scott from Gonzaga who plays with a high-profile AAU program and thus now has offers from Dayton and URI, among others.
If we can sign a kid like that, great. But we are also recruiting some very talented public school kids in the 2017 class who might turn out to be even better in college.
Hopefully the staff doesn't stop mining that undervalued territory once we're back winning and going to the dance on a regular basis.
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