Freelance Friday: State Bias and Recruiting Rankings

Freelance Fridays is a semi-regular series on Nylon Calculus where we solicit and publish basketball analytics work submitted by readers. This week’s edition is from Thomas O’Farrell and concerns the degree to which high school recruiting rankings might be subject to regional bias. Thomas is a lifelong fan of basketball and an avid recreational player. From the suburbs outside of Philadelphia, he’s a Sixers fan looking forward to the future. His favorite topic is forecasting player development and how to better evaluate it.

Questions, comments or submissions for Freelance Fridays should be directed to TheNylonCalculus at gmail dot com

The 2016 USA Today Basketball All-Americans were a surprising bunch. With the exception of Ben Simmons and Jamal Murray, there is a conspicuous lack of former top ten high school prospects on the list.

This year it was less heralded players coming from states not considered to be basketball hotbeds that ended up making a huge impact. Jarrod Uthoff was the 90^th ranked recruit in his high school class and from the state of Iowa, Georges Niang was ranked 56^th and from Massachusetts, and Kris Dunn was ranked 23^rd and from Connecticut. This didn’t stop them from all eventually becoming All-Americans, and when it came time for the NBA draft, Kris Dunn was picked 5^th overall, Niang was picked 50^th, and Uthoff played with the Sacramento Kings Summer League team before signing a with Toronto as undrafted free agent. These three players slid under the radar coming out of high school, and this can be attributed to one factor they all share: they didn’t come from huge states known for producing basketball talent.

None of them came from California, Florida, Texas or Illinois, and the case can be made that if they did, they likely would’ve been ranked much higher out of high school.

High school recruiting rankings are filled with players from the larger states. Players hailing from these states typically take up an inordinate amount of these rankings, even when considering their populations. It has been a widely accepted notion that players from these bigger states will play against better competition, and will be more ready for both college and the pros than someone from a state like Iowa, who won’t be able to play against top flight competition and will be capable of coasting against inferior competition. However, as is the case with many widely accepted notions, there is no respectable study proving that states such as California, Florida, Texas and Illinois are justified in taking up such a large portion of the rankings, or whether high school players from these states really turn out to be better than the rest.

My methodology to determine overachieving and underachieving states was to compile certain attributes for the top 100 high school recruits from the 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 recruiting classes. For this cohort of about 500 players, each player would be rewarded a point if they met the criteria for win shares, and a point if they met the criteria in the draft. The criteria for each are outlined below. If they received a point in each category they were labeled an overachiever, if they received a point in one category but not the other they would be meeting expectations, and a point in neither category would result in them underachieving. A state with a large amount of overachievers and those meeting expectations has clearly been underrated, and the states with large amount of underachievers have been overrated.

Players met the “achievement expectation” for the recruiting rank based on the following scheme:

Top 10 Recruit: Produce a win share of at least 4 freshman year, or average 4+ win shares per season throughout collegiate career;

11-30 Recruit: Produce a win share of at least 3 freshman year, or average 3.5+ win shares per season throughout collegiate career;

31-60 Recruit: Produce a win share of at least 2 freshman year, or average 2.5+ win shares per season throughout collegiate career;

61-100 Recruit: Produce a win share of at least 1.5 freshman year, or average 2+ win shares per season throughout collegiate career.

Meanwhile, the “draft expectation” criteria is set forth below:

Top 10: Drafted in the top 20;

Recruit 11+: Drafted in any spot.

498 players were analyzed using these scales (certain special cases were disregarded), and the results were 88 (18%) overachievers, 188 (38%) meeting expectations and 222 (45%) underachievers.

The players were then grouped by state. Each state was awarded 2 points for each overachiever, 1 point for each player meeting expectations, and 0 points for each underachiever. Taking the average for each state and subtracting the national average of 0.73 gives each state’s score. A positive numbers meant the state’s recruits had been underrated as a whole, while a negative number indicated the reverse. I then multiplied by the number of players in each state divided by 10 (The average number of players per state). This was to differentiate between the bigger states that produced a large number of overachievers and underachievers and the states that only produced a few, as a significant sample size deviating one way or the other is more indicative than a smaller one.

For example, Iowa had top 4 top 100 players over this 6 year period, Marcus Paige, Adam Woodbury, Jarrod Uthoff and Harrison Barnes.

Paige “overachieved” by averaging 4.3 WS/season, and getting drafted 55^th,.

Woodbury “underachieved” with a freshman win share of 1.7, a career win share of 2.3 and going undrafted.

Uthoff had 2.7 WS his freshman year and averaged 4.3 for his career but was not drafted, so he gets 1 point for “achieving as expected.”

Harrison Barnes had 4.3 WS his freshman year and averaged 4.7 for his career and was also drafted 7^th overall, so he’s considered to have “overachieved” even his lofty recruiting rank.

Iowa produced 2 overachievers, 1 player who met expectations, and 1 underachiever, for a sum of 5. This was then divided by the number of players from Iowa (4) to get 1.25. 1.25 is then subtracted by the national number of 0.73 for a difference of .52. This is quite a large difference, however because Iowa only produced 4 players it doesn’t indicate a significant deviation. To represent this we multiply the difference of .52 times the number of players from Iowa (4) and divide it by 10. Iowa’s score is .208. Because this number is positive, it is clear that Iowa had been an underrated state for high school basketball.

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The results for each state are shown on the heat map below, with green representing an underrated a state, and the darker the green the more underrated. Red represents the overrated states, with dark red being most overrated and light yellow being only slightly overrated. If a state is white, it means no top 100 recruits came from that area during the sample period.

Significant takeaways

The Southeast gets far too much credit: The states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama produced 108 of the 498 players analyzed, however every one of these states with the exception of South Carolina was rated negative, and even South Carolina was only barely positive. Tennessee and North Carolina were deemed the two most overrated states by a fairly wide margin. The list of underachievers from the southeast goes on and on: Adonis Thomas and Theo Pinson were both top 10 recruits, C.J. Leslie, Austin Nichols and Isaac Copeland were all top 20 recruits. Maybe the football talent halo over the Southeast provides an unjustified overhang for its basketball recruits.

The gray area between the Southeast and Midwest is actually a green area: Iowa, Missouri Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi all were considered to be underrated states. It seems that the Deep South gets far too much exposure. What this area lacks in quantity, it makes up for in quality. This lack of scale may be one reason why this area doesn’t receive enough consideration. As mentioned before, Marcus Paige and Harrison Barnes were both overachievers. And Missouri had produced Bradley Beal, Otto Porter and Ben McLemore. Devin Booker and Rodney Hood from Mississippi have both shot their way into the NBA. Arkansas produced Bobby Portis and Archie Goodwin. And the list of Texans goes on and on: Myles Turner, Emmanuel Mudiay, Kelly Oubre, Justise Winslow, Julius Randle, Marcus Smart, et cetera.

A top college program doesn’t indicate top high school players in the area: Consider the most illustrious college basketball programs in the country: Duke, UNC, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville, UCLA, Michigan State, and Florida. Not one state that was home to one of these colleges was ranked in the top 15 “overachievers”. Of the 50 states, North Carolina was 50, Florida was 47, Kansas was 40, California was 36, Michigan was 19 and Kentucky was 17.

Underachievers can be found in Mid and Mountain West: The five state tandem of Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma were all considered to be overrated. This area isn’t exactly known for being a basketball hotbed, so the fact that they couldn’t even meet the already low expectation is disappointing. Also, none of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota or South Dakota produced a single top 100.

These original colonies play big: The small states in the Northeast clearly aren’t getting enough credit. Maryland, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island all outperformed the national average. Talents from these small northeastern states have clearly been underrepresented, as Massachusetts and Maryland were the 3^rd and 4^th most underrated states, respectively. Maybe Josh Selby, the number 5 overall recruit in 2010 from Maryland who turned out to be horribly overrated scared people away from the state. The highest rated Maryland recruit since Josh Selby was Melo Trimble at 29, but Maryland has quietly put together several overachievers, including Jerami and Jerian Grant, Justin Anderson and Chinanu Onuaku. Massachusetts is a bit more respected in the ranking communities. In the last five years, Massachusetts has had 5 of its 13 players ranked in the top 25, and they’ve lived up to expectations, highlighted by blue chip prospects such as Nerlens Noel and Noah Vonleh but also lesser known players such Georges Niang and Jake Layman.

Great Movie; Great Players: It’s been 30 years since Hoosiers was released, detailing the basketball crazed state of Indiana. But 30 years later, it is clear that Indiana remains a hotbed for talent. Maybe those ranking high school basketball players should watch the movie again before setting out on their task, as Indiana ranks as the most underrated state. They have churned out success stories at an astonishing pace: Trey Lyles, Demetrius Jackson, Gary Harris, Glenn Robinson, Mitch McGary, AJ Hammons, Cody Zeller, Deshaun Thomas and many more.

Head to Believeland: And if those ranking high school basketball don’t feel like watching Hoosiers, they could at least watch the NBA finals, and realize the two best players, James and Curry, both were born in the state of Ohio and think that there might be more where that came from. Ohio was the second most underrated state, and despite only having two players exceed expectations, Trey Burke and Terry Rozier (Jared Sullinger was one pick away from being an overachiever, as he was a top 10 pick drafted 21^st) , they only had one player who underachieved (Elijah Macon, 45th recruit in 2012). Players from Ohio consistently carved out successful college careers, such as Juwan Staten, Adreian Payne, Jakarr Sampson and Nigel Hayes.

Oh Canada!:While this study has focused on the fifty states, it should be noted that , Canadian players were also unjustifiably underrepresented. Only players from Indiana and Ohio were considered to be more underrated. Canada had the highest percentage of overachievers, as Andrew Wiggins, Tyler Ennis, Nik Stauskas, Trtistan Thompson, Cory Joseph and Dwight Powell made up 6 of their 13 top 100 recruits.

While the data doesn’t suggest recruiters should completely abandon the large, populous states in favor of small states, it does suggest that certain states have a knack for producing overachieving talent. While other factors can be at play here, including coaching once in college, the scale and scope of this analysis suggests that recruiters and those ranking the players should buy a heavy winter coat and spend more time scouting in Iowa, Indiana, Massachusetts, Ohio, Missouri and Canada during the basketball season and head to Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi when they need some time to thaw out. Such a schedule appears to be one way to “overachieve” in recruiting today.

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