re: Tide Hoops | Recruiting

This is going to be a long post so sorry ahead of time , but I have some recruiting/roster breakdowns that may be interesting to some of you.

First off the point of my research was to determine how much our players have progressed under Avery and Oats compared to their recruit rating, and what we can expect moving forward.

To do this, I first had to determine how good a player should be out of high school based on recruit rankings. I decided that tiers are the easiest way to break it down. Looking back at the top 5 recruits in the country since 2015 was a good start, but for times sake I’m only listing notable guys.

2015: Ben Simmons, Brandon Ingram, Jalen Brown
2016: Jason Tatum, Lonzo Ball, D. Fox
2017: Michael Porter, Deandre Ayton, Collin Sexton
2018: Zion Williamson, RJ Barrett
2019: James Wiseman, Anthony Edwards
2020: NA (no draft yet)

Looking through the rest of the rankings I was able to determine the tiers:

1-5 is ELITE
6-11 is 1A
12-25 is 2A
26-50 is B
51-100 1C
101-200 2C

Obviously there are some guys who play much better than their ranking, but usually it’s a couple years down the road whereas the top guys come in perform well usually immediately.

I also decided after seeing how the average player progresses in terms of going pro, that most guys should move up roughly 10 spots each passing year.

Example: John Petty came in as the 33rd best player out of high school. He “should” have gone pro by year 2 or 3 at worst, and because he didn’t he should have been one of the best players in the country his senior year. He did not progress as a player until Oats became our head coach.

So with that as an example, if you run through our players from last year you will see that most of them recruited by Avery did not progress very much based on their rankings out of high school. Herb obviously became a very good player, but once again did not reach full potential until Oats came along.

Primo came in ranked 61, Gary was 93, and Shackleford was 107.

Primo had moments where he played like a top 50 guy and some where he looked closer to 100, but he really didn’t get enough minutes to measure and was a little banged up.

Gary definitely played better than his ranking especially considering how few minutes he got, and Shackleford has played like a top 50 guy for sure.

So looking forward, Oats has these guys playing at or above their ranking and things should really take off this year as the team finally bought in to the system and are now comfortable with it completely.

Player progression really isn’t an issue anymore, although I think for Petty and Herb they were held back for 2 years by Avery. 4 years under Oats and Herb may have been Kevin Durant.

Now you add some top talent in JD Davison and Bediako as well as Burnett and you are going to start seeing our players get drafted year after year.

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Getting rid of the One&One would be a mistake IMO. It adds drama

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Totally agree.

I do like adding a limit on timeouts in the last 2 minutes and the option to take possession instead of free throws.

Tennessee making some big moves. They just landed 2021 #60 Jonas Aidoo and are now the favorites for 2022 #6 Brandon Huntley-Hatfield.

Unless Gary wants to willingly switch, I don't see why you would take it away from him for a newcomer.

That's a lot of ifs.

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Nimari Burnett also official as Alabama’s second and (possibly) final addition from the transfer portal.

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Cecil.......interesting

LINK ]Alabama hoops welcomes trio of new additions (BOL)

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The interesting thing is that after this season we are going to hoping for free transfers to fill the backcourt positions on our team. We could possibly lose JD, Q, Shack, Primo and Ellis. Burnett could be our one experienced returning true guard.

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IMO, shocking if Shack left, unlikely that Ellis leaves and less than 50% that Primo leaves. Nevertheless, as you say, there will be backcourt needs to be filled. Alabama will probably fare well in those pursuits.

Primo shouldn’t be gone pro unless he just blows up this year. He will be overshadowed by Ellis, JQ, and Davison

He needs a third year imo