A Whirlwind of Recruiting

My first post on HoopVision was going to be an analysis on the impact of a top-15 recruiting class (according to Rivals.com) in both college basketball and football. In a year when Kentucky wins the national championship after its third consecutive #1 ranked recruiting class, the impact of the one-and-done rule seemed to have manifested itself into one of the best college basketball teams in the last two decades. In the analysis versus football, we should have seen that a top recruiting class in basketball has a bigger impact in the first year than it does in football, where players stay in school much longer.

However, the correlation between winning percentage and X number of years after a top-15 recruiting class was low. Very little change from year one down the road. So, we decided to keep the analysis to basketball only and look at what a top recruiting class does to a team.