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A look at the talent on UW’s roster-from the perspective of the players’ high school recruiting ratings
I’m sure that there will be some fans that don’t put a lot of weight behind some of the numbers that are included in this analysis. But, I think that most would agree with the trends that these numbers indicate.
For the past few years I’ve kept track of the recruiting ratings of all of the players on UW’s roster. I’ve been doing this on a per-year basis (i.e. what does it look like this year). But I recently thought that it would be useful to see how these compared year-by-year.
I keep track of 4 different values: the recruiting ratings from Rivals, the ratings from ESPN, the ratings from 247Sports, and the 247Sports Composite. I also started keeping track of On3’s ratings, but they did not have enough data on UW players that were signed prior to 2024, so I’m not including them in this analysis.
For each of the recruiting sites, I looked at the average ratings of all of the scholarship players on the team. In a few cases, there were not any recruiting ratings for some players-mostly walkons that were put on scholarship later. Those were ignored and the results are from only the ones where there was a rating.
First up is 247Sports. This seems to be the primary source for recruiting ratings that most Husky fans are familiar with and use. 247Sports has 2 different values for most recruits.
The first is their ratings. This is the values that their analysts assign to recruits. Here is what the average rating for all of UW’s scholarship players has been from them over the past several years.
The first note about the graph above is about the vertical axis. For 247Sports, a rating of 90 indicates a 4-star recruit and a rating of 80 is the lowest for a 3-star recruit. So, in 2020, the average rating was very close to being a 4-star recruit. But, as you can see, the average has declined since then.
The other note is that the value for 2024 is just based on the players currently on the roster. This will obviously change between now and the start of the season (hence the “*”).
Many fans are probably more familiar with the 247Sports Composite. This is their composite rating based on not just their rating, but it combines the ratings from their rating and other sources (like ESPN and Rivals).
The same notes from above apply here. The one difference is that on their Composite, a rating above 0.89 is a 4-star, so UW had a 4-star average in 2020 (barely, coming in at .8901). And just like the 247Sports rating, UW’s average has declined since then.
Next is Rivals.
Rivals uses a different set of ratings. A value of 5.5, 5.6, and 5.7 indicates a 3-star recruit (low 3-star, medium 3-star, and high 3-star respectively); a value of 5.8 would be a 4-star recruit.
Similar to 247Sports, UW averaged just above a high 3-star in 2020 and has declined since then. If you convert the Rivals values to the equivalent for 247Sports, you’d see that the Rivals values are slightly below those of 247Sports (which matches the observations by some Husky fans that Rivals rates Husky recruits slightly lower). The rating for 2020, for example, would be about 89 and declining to about 86.7 in 2024. But even though the values from Rivals are lower, the trend is very similar.
Here is the trend from ESPN’s ratings.
The trend line for ESPN is different than Rivals and 247Sports, it is more of a steady decline. But the result is the same. UW’s average in 2020 was just over 79, with 80 and above being a 4-star recruit.
If you are wondering why there was more of a dip in 2022 with the other sites compared to ESPN, there appear to be a couple of factors. First is that there were a few players that were on the team in 2022 who were ranked higher by ESPN than the other sites but had left by 2023; these included Alex Cook, Sav’ell Smalls, Jabez Tinae, Wayne Taulapapa, and Aaron Dumas-the latter were only on the team for just 2022. The other factor is that there were a few players who were not rated by ESPN that were by the other sites, so they were ignored when I averaged the ratings on ESPN. But a few of these were rated by the other sites-and they were rated below the average for the rest of the team-so they dragged the averages down for the other recruiting ratings, but not for ESPN. These included Demario King and Kristopher Moll-both who were only on the team that one year.
There is a commonly-used term in recruiting called “Blue Chip Ratio” that some have used to indicate the talent level on a team. It is usually expressed as a percentage of ‘blue chip’ (4-star or 5-star) recruits on a roster. While I think that this value can be helpful, in the era of the Transfer Portal, I don’t think that it does a good job of taking transfers into account.
As an alternative, I came up with a similar method which looks at all of the scholarship players on a roster to come up with the “Blue Chip Percentage”. The “Blue Chip Ratio” uses the ‘Blue Chip’ recruits in the last 4 recruiting classes. My method looks at all of the players on a roster.
All 4 of the ratings mentioned above are included in the graph above. I’ve also added a fifth rating: “Any”. This indicates that a player is a ‘blue chip’ if any of the recruiting ratings list that player as a 4-star or 5-star. This value is higher since some players have been listed as a 4-star in one recruiting rating, but not in others. For example, they may have a rating of 90 in 247Sports (a low 4-star), but 5.7 in Rivals (a high 3-star)-like Vincent Holmes and Anthony James.
247Sports has been giving a transfer rating to many of the players that enter the Transfer Portal. In some cases the transfer rating may be higher than the rating that the player had in high school. A good example of this is Drew Azzopardi who was no higher than a mid 3-star in the ratings in high school, but 247Sports gave him a 0.91 grade as a transfer (a 4-star). In other cases the transfer grade may be lower. An example of this is Daniel Ngata who was a 4-star in all of the recruiting services in high school, but had a transfer grade of 0.88 (high 3-star). Both of these players would be considered a ‘blue chip’ using the “Any” method.
Regardless of which method is used, the trend is the same-declining, and very consistent between the different methods. Furthermore, the decline from last season to 2024 is steep.
It’s not hard to see why the percentage is declining. UW lost a lot of highly-rated players since the end of the season-some to the NFL, some to transfers, and at least one to a medical retirement. Of the players that have left, 11 had been a 4-star in all 4 places (ESPN, Rivals, and both 247Sports ratings).
Coach Fisch has brought in 31 new players so far this year. Only 3 of them were 4-star recruits in all 4 places. Only 6 of those are ‘blue chip’ recruits (<20%) on the 247Sports Composite; the same number are ‘blue chip’ on the 247Sports rating. Rivals has slightly more (7) while ESPN has less (4). The “Any” method is helped by having 5 of the transfers having a 4-star transfer grade (0.9 or above) by 247Sports.
But the roster for 2024 is still a work-in-progress. It’s possible that Coach Fisch can bring in some highly-rated transfer players to at least reduce the decline. He would need to bring in nothing but ‘blue chip’ recruits to fill the remaining spots for the 2024 to be about the same as they were in 2023. That seems unlikely.
But if Coach Fisch is able to meet his goal of having the 2025 recruiting class be the best, the trend should be reversed. But it may take a few years of classes like that to get back up to a 50% ‘Blue Chip Ratio’.
It should also be of note that while having highly-rated recruits helps, it is not the only factor that matters. That should be obvious since UW was in the National Championship game despite the talent being down from where it was the previous few years. Part of that is obviously coaching and development. And part of it is experience as well; a high 3-star recruit that is a senior and has started for 2 years is going to be better than an incoming freshman 4-star. Of course, it isn’t an either-or; Husky fans should want both improved recruits as well as the coaching and development that has been present for most of the last 10 years (Jimmy Lake era being the exception).
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