Recruiting / Kool Aid

[i77cat]

When we entered the A10, it was difficult to win any games. Now, any team will have to work hard to beat us. The team is playing well, the coaching is excellent, and there is energy in the building. My wife doesn't really care for women's basketball. But she loved the win over Georgetown. She liked that game more than any Davidson women's game she has seen. That includes some big wins in the Southern Conference tournament. We are going places.

[citycat]

A couple of us realized the difference Coach Fulks would make at one of her first public appearances. A Davidson Basketball event was scheduled at a restaurant on Lake Norman. The crowd was much larger than expected because someone announced the event to the world, not the intended attendees. There was a large, loud crowd in the rest of the restaurant.

A former AD spoke to the crowd in a soft monotone than would have been appropriate in a funeral home. People standing 10 feet away could not understand him. Coach McKillop spoke next and could be heard a little better. Coach Fulks spoke last and could be understood on the opposite shore of the Lake. In addition to her volume, she was enthusiastic and would have been inappropriate in a funeral home.

At least 2 in attendance asked Coach Fulks why she took the job and whether anyone could win in Women's Basketball at Davidson. Coach Fulks scoffed at the notion a Davidson Women’s team couldn’t win and convinced the rest of us Davidson was a sleeping giant in women's basketball. With Coach Fulks, Davidson will achieve its potential.

After last year's season, we sent some money to the Women's program to reward them for their excellent season. Coach Fulks sent us a handwritten note. She can convince players they want to attend play for Davidson and attend school there. She will win and make the school proud.

PS. If I understood her correctly, she said she lived in Charlotte as a child and attended Charlotte Country Day. She learned about Davidson then.

[chantillycat]

Notwithstanding my panoptic purveyance of publicly available recruiting propaganda, I do in fact manage my expectations.

Are we talking seismic changes?

It depends on what you mean by seismic.

Massey keeps two numbers in that RAT column of his, which is the default sort column. The first number is the ordinal ranking, from 1 to 351, of each NCAA D1 team.

The second number, in the tiny font underneath the ranking number, is the Massey *rating*. As of yesterday morning, the highest rating belonged to Baylor, at 2.71. The lowest was Chicago State, at 0.46.

We were 1.53 yesterday. Today we're 1.56. In 2016-17, Michele Savage's last year, we finished under 1.00.

Here's a histogram of Massey *ratings* as of yesterday morning.



Note how the teams are more strung out to the right of the chart. Better coaches, better players. The hill gets steeper as your team improves. And we're now at or past that inflection point where it starts to get steep.

Our commits/signees are really good. Each is versatile, each is elite in at least one area. They may not be in the espnW top 100, but they're not far off. And perhaps some of them should be espnW top 100.

Getting our team into the Massey top 100 and staying there is one thing. We're headed there. Getting into the top 50 is a much bigger ask, given the supply of top players who can thrive academically at Davidson.

Our staff is doing a great job. Coaching, conditioning, community outreach, player recruiting, player retention, player development, social media presence, the whole package.

Again, very thankful for this bunch.

[catnhat]

Let me see if I get this. The bar and related number represent the number of teams which have Massey ratings that fall within the parameters listed below the bar?

[chantillycat]

Spot on.

[chantillycat]

Btw, you can also histogram the rankings/ordinals, if you want.

Every bar will be the same height, except for one or two of them. It's not particularly illuminating.

Massey rankings histogram

[GoalCat]

Recent and current program results certainly pass the eye-test, and it seems indisputable that Coach is doing great work. Still, I'm wondering what the in-the-knows believe about our player commitments that we already know about for "future" years (i.e., HS Classes of 20 and 21). As an admittedly ill-informed but interested observer, I'm suggesting that they appear to be massive commitments that would be expected to continue our upwards trajectory, and even accelerate that trajectory. So, I'm wondering what you all think to be the case ... I recognize it is all speculation, but that's what we do on this Board!

Secondly, I'm wondering why we think that Davidson's high academic standards make breaking into the Top 50-100 is such a daunting challenge for the women's team. I actually think that making a more rapid climb could be easier for the women than it was for the men (for whom it took decades to escape the wilderness). So, I suppose I self-describe as ill-informed, interested, and optimistic

[chantillycat]

IMO, the men's player pool is still deeper than the women's pool. This conveys to the pool of Davidson-targetable players.

And there are one and done's on the men's side, which weakens the right-side of their histogram.

This is why I think it's harder on the women's side. I think this is why you see a lot fewer earlier round upsets in the women's NCAA tournament.

Why do you think it could be easier for a women's team?

[GoalCat]

Great points, and I definitely hadn't thought about the more shallow pool of talented players on the women's side. Of course, that will continue to improve, but for now, definitely an impact. So that all makes good sense.

In terms of being easier, I am specifically referring to Davidson, not any generic school. Obviously, I'm a homer, but I feel like a Davidson education will be even more of a consideration for the pool of athletically-talented women's athletes than for the men. Without the same type of professional prospects, their choice should be more about what their basketball talent can bring them in terms of educational opportunity. What do you think?

[chantillycat]

100% agree.

From CoachGCF's Twitter bio: "Elite Academics + Elite Athletics = Davidson Experience."

It's definitely a selling point, and one that surely resonates. E.g., Mallorie Haines wants to be a marine veterinarian. Great fit.

Sophia, Mackenzie, and Katrin Chiemeka are the only Davidson women I'm aware of that are playing professionally right now, or have played recently.

[catnhat]

15 available schollies (vs 13 for men) works to the advantage of the better programs. The 14th and 15th players on their bench would start for many lesser DI schools.

On the flip side there are fewer women players who don't give a damn about academics. A higher percentage of women should attain the levels necessary to satisfy our admissions office. We don't hear that much about admissions on the men's side because our staff is so good at identifying players who should be admitted (I remember 2 recruitsin the last 15 years who didn't get admitted).

[chantillycat]

For calibration, here are our end-of-season Massey rankings for the last 20 years.



This is Davidson MBB, of course.

We've been in the top 50 only 3 times in 20 years, and 2 of those teams had Steph Curry.

The good news is the trend since joining the A10. We've been in the top 100 every season. Pre-A10, we were in the top 100 barely over half the time.

[chantillycat]

High school previews...

I don't know that we'll have quite the excitement of last year when we had a sectional champ, two state runner-ups, and a state champ. We'll see.

** Sallie/Westminster Christian Academy Lions...

They figure to be good again, assuming everyone came back, as they were young last year. It's not easy finding stuff for them, at least not for me. MaxPreps shows only four games on their schedule. They played their first game this past Friday and won handily. Game two is tonight, I believe.

** Tomisin/Walton Raiders...

They started their season 1-2. Tomisin had 23 in the most recent game, no idea about the other two. There are already Hudl highlights out there for all three games which show her making some difficult shots look pretty easy, and blocking several opponents' shots.

** Mallorie/Davidson Day School Patriots...

Guard Nevaeh Brown (Wake Forest commit) has transferred to Mallard Creek. Another quality guard, Jael Hall, has transferred to Concord First Assembly. That's a lot of production to replace.

To the shock of no one, Mallorie has already scored 45 points in a game this season.

[chantillycat]

Nease and New Castle were very good about updating MaxPreps with detailed game stats. AUS U20s, NBL1, and WA SBL had even more detailed data for every game. That made it pretty easy to see all the cool things that Peyton, Cameron, Adelaide, and Rosie were doing.

I think you'll like this year's information, too, but what's publicly available is much more spotty.

Sallie: I'll start with her since she and WCA are the hardest to dig up stuff on. MaxPreps says the Lions are 2-1, which I'm sure is incomplete. It has no scoring data. The innerwebs tells me they've had at least one other game, a victory in which Sallie contributed 32 points. Sorry... that's all I have right now.

Mallorie was averaging over 30 points per game the last time I checked with the Observer. She has already had a 39 pt game and two 40+ pt games. Among those were a game in which she made 8 triples.

Tomisin, I'm guessing, is averaging in the neighborhood of 20 ppg. I know of three games of 20+ points so far, and I've haven't seen any that weren't double figures. Her team's games are not particularly high scoring -- 30's thru 50's, typically -- so you can calibrate her ppg against that.

I'm aware of a game in which Tomisin made four treys. In another game, she was 13-14 from the FT line. And in last night's game, with less than 3 seconds remaining, she converted a 3-pointer off the bounce for a one-point Walton victory against a team [1] that was ranked over 150 spots higher in the GA rankings.

That concludes today's Kool Aid binge.

[1] Just a side note... One of the players on that opposing team is 6'4 post Kate Manley, who was one of Sallie's teammates on FBC BounceNation 2020 Jay.

[chantillycat]

Holiday tournaments...

* Tomisin made all-tourney in hers. https://twitter.com/ladyhoundsbb/status ... 0723902467

* I couldn't find an all-tourney team for Mallorie's, but she scored 23, 23, and 28 in her three games in Florida.

* No holiday games for Sallie, as best I can tell. WCA is back on the court tomorrow evening after a three week break.