Thursday, November 12, 2009

Paris's path to Boston and other links

The Globe published a great feature on Biko Paris. When outsiders predict 9th place finishes, I think they are underestimating Paris' ability to fill Rice's shoes.


BC beat Duke in the ACC Tournament and advanced to semis. The Eagles take on NC State on Friday.


The Herald published Mike Morrissey's story of going from walkon to starter.


Although I don't think it will be a big theme this weekend, this game does mark Spaz's return to Virginia. He didn't leave there on the best of terms and was one of the scapegoats of their collapse after being No. 1.


Playing New England is special for Jamie Silva.


Given what we've been discussing on the blog, it is interesting to note that on average only 37% of the Rivals 100 make it to the NFL. Also that Rivals thinks BC is one of the better programs at finding players for our system.


The offensive line feels they are getting better every week.


Former Eagle Shamari Spears is starting his UNC-C career off on the right foot.


The women's basketball team and hockey team picked up some early commitments.

16 comments:

matthew2 said...

hahh I was just wondering about Shamari......

Definitely laughed when the link loaded, not what I expected.

What are these rules that he loves to break?!

ATL_eagle said...

I don't know...it seems to be a chronic problem.

Dan said...

The 37% is interesting but kinda piggybacks on what I was saying on the other post. Selection is not a perfect 1:1 science it is simply a game of odds.

With some quick and dirty math, we see that 37% is not great but it's way better than the non 100 players.

There's 120 FBS schools that bring in approx 20ish recruits each year. That yields 2400 recruits of which 2300 are not rivals 100.

Now let's look at the draft. 7 rounds with 32 selections a piece for a total of 224 players. Take out the 37 Rivals 100 players and you're left with 187 players that are coming from the 2300 other recruits from the same class or a selection rate of **drum roll please**... 8%

This is why people value these players more. It's not exact by any means and people love to point out the 4-5 stars that fail but if I told you that a kid had a 37% chance of being a pro player vs. an 8% chance which one would you target first?

This is why it is important for BC to go to the 4-5 star top 100-150 first and target the "BC guys" in there before going on diamond in the rough expeditions.

CT said...

Agreed, Dan. I'm glad you typed that up and not me.

almost_paul said...

I love Biko. He is going to make a lot of people look stupid for picking BC 9th in the ACC.

mod34b said...

Dan -- instead of using all 120 schools to get the straw-man 8% argument, why not use the 65 BCS schools. Seems to be the better comparator.

If you do, I would bet that your 8% figure will almost certainly go beyond 20% and your argument, it would appear, would be severly weakened.

If you've got the data, luv to see it.

Dan said...

You clearly missed the part where I said quick and dirty math.
And those stats would be flawed unless you take out all the kids that got drafted from non BCS schools and even the few that make it out from non-FBS.

If we go completely quick and dirty and assume only kids from BCS schools make up those remaining 187 non top 100 picks it actually only goes up to 15%.

ObserverCollege said...

Speaking as my Inner Eagle: You don't know a priori which kids are going to maximize their potential. Nor do you really know which kids are going to be most willing to work within the concept of a team. So you want your school to reflect the attributes most attractive to those who will work hard, will be able to pick up the scheme, and will be willing to subvert their ego to achieve team success. By the same token, you want to turn off guys who are selfish and searching for the glory without earning it.

If you recruit on the basis of early PT, then you're going to get guys who expect to see the field immediately. If you recruit on the basis of the school's "lifestyle", then you'll get kids who party too much and don't have the dedication to maximize their potential. If you recruit on the basis of, say, giving your top RB recruit the first carry of the season or the number he wants, then you're breeding division as players see practice habits matter less than high school accolades.

Yes, certain schools can sift through 5-stars and by sheer numbers put together a dynamite team. But don't think BC can't compete at that level. The attributes that attract players to BC are most highly correlated with those factors that lead a recruit to maximize his potential. It's a lot easier to get everyone on the same page at BC, and to implement a game plan that takes advantage of the commitment and intelligence the BC players collectively hold.

Now combine the drive of the BC players with a coaching staff who shows the same level of commitment and strives for maximum performance. Do that, and you have a team that can reach Top-5 status at the END of the season--not just "hold hostage" the #2 ranking in November.

Dan said...

Did atl hack Observer's computer?

Also, can someone explain to me why all of us on these boards got so excited over Haden's signing 2 yrs ago, Quinn last year and Shakim this year if the ratings mean nothing? Is it because we all know these guys personally and can tell their BC guys?

Anyways, I don't wanna paint the picture that I think ratings are then end all be all. They are not. But they definitely have a high value when looking at the total picture of a recruit. Overall BC does a great job all around and it appears to be trending upwards in terms of BC fit + athletic ability.

Dan said...

they're*

mod34b said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mod34b said...

ObserverCollege --

Nice comments. Welcome to the world of plain straight talk. Its nice to take you seriously (but sure you can go overboard every now and then)


Dan -- Your math was too dirty: 187/1100 ~ 17% (e.g., ratio of NFL draft success for 4/5 star BCS recruit vs not a 4-5 star BCS recruit is about 2:1; not ~5:1)

Dan said...

Yea I know I corrected that for you already. And at 2:1 odds you still don't like that player better???

PS It's actually 187/1200 and again this is still assuming no non bcs players get drafted which is inaccurate so we creep back towards 3:1 but whatever we both know this math is fuzzy at best :)

mod34b said...

Dan -- this kind of math reminds of the (bad) economics profs I had for frosh macro econ course. Forgot the guy's name; but never forgot how boring the prof was

Yes, its all junk until someone looks at real data.

But maybe a better perspective, is for a 4-5 star recruit there is a 63% chance of no NFL success. For others, the failure rate is 85%. Still a crap shoot either way.

It would be interesting if some econ wonk from BC could devise a better system of finding the non-starred outliers who do not go to big time schools but are great (D. Ware, O Umenyiora, T Owens) and can handle BC

Here is a blurb about Ware's high school recruitment:

Well, it has been almost ten years now since Ware come out of high school, so the details are a bit fuzzy, but the best I recall...

I remember he came out of Auburn High School in either 2000 or 2001. Of course, Auburn High is a 6A program and a very nice school with a lot of famous alums, so exposure wasn't really the problem. I do remember that Ware was a multi-sport athlete, and if I remember correctly he played just about every sport he could. He played football as well, and he was a pretty good high school player, but nothing really overly special. I think he might have made All-Area as a senior, but again nothing special. He played both linebacker and wide receiver, and frankly was just way too small. He wasn't even 200 pounds in high school, and he didn't garner any real recruiting attention.

He ultimately signed with Troy, and they were a throwaway offer if I recall correctly. Ware was good friends with Osi Umenyiora -- now a star for the New York Giants -- and they went to Auburn High together... and it was Umenyiora who basically convinced the Troy coaching staff to take a chance on him. Once he got to Troy, of course, the rest is history. He ballooned up to 6'4 and 270 pounds, and became a beast.

As best I recall, Ware was just one of those extremely late bloomers. If you would have looked at him in high school, you would have never thought he would have had any chance whatsoever of playing D1-A ball, and then he suddenly grows into a freak athlete. Basically the same thing that happened with Terrell Owens.

matthew2 said...

haha atl.. I'm a dope for even asking

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