Keeping them home

There are a number of high profile recruits coming out of Georgia in the next year or two - Daniel Giddens and Jaylen Brown of Wheeler, just to name two.  This is nothing unusual.  Georgia routinely produces elite basketball talent.

The fact that Giddens has said he'll be announcing in less than a month means we're bound to encounter one of the most common recruiting memes out there:  you have to keep these kids at home.

Whether it's a mumbled, "Why can't we keep these guys in the state of Georgia?" or a vociferous "Close the borders!" this topic is guaranteed to come up as you discuss Georgia basketball recruiting with your friends and colleagues.  (Also, can I please discuss Georgia basketball recruiting with your friends and colleagues, because when I try to do so with mine, this tends to be their reaction?)

The theory is that an inability to keep elite Georgia players in the state implies a recruiting deficiency that has to be fixed.  The underlying assumption is that being geographically close to an elite player offers an inherent recruiting advantage that Georgia is not taking advantage of.

But is it true?  I decided to run some numbers.  Data was gathered using ESPN's recruiting rankings.

2009
5-star players:  18
Players who stayed in-state:  4 - 22%
Players who stayed close* to in-state:   8 - 44%

2010
5-star players:  11
Players who stayed in-state:  3 - 27%
Players who stayed close* to in-state:   3 - 27%

2011
5-star players:  22
Players who stayed in-state:  8 - 36%
Players who stayed close* to in-state:   15 - 68%

2012
5-star players:  19
Players who stayed in-state:  6 - 32%
Players who stayed close* to in-state:  13 - 68%

2013
5-star players:  22
Players who stayed in-state:  6 - 27%
Players who stayed close* to in-state:   12 - 55%

2014
5-star players:  29
Players who stayed in-state:  7 - 24%
Players who stayed close* to in-state:   16 - 55%

Before we go any further, there are plenty of flaws with my methodology.  First, it would probably be worth extending it to the 4-star players as well.  Second, in the case of prep schools, I considered the location of the prep school, not the player's original home state (which, in many cases, could be different).  If I find myself with (a lot) more time in the future, I may attempt to fine tune these points.

For now, though, the numbers imply that being geographically close to an elite basketball player doesn't drastically increase your chances of landing a commitment.  Why is that?

It is because a select group of schools are getting commitments from these players regardless of geography.  Staying home to play for Houston - as Danuel House did in 2012 - is very different than staying home to play for North Carolina or Duke.  In fact, if you filter the above lists and remove the current recruiting powerhouses from consideration, you're left with 14 kids where proximity may have played a significant role in their decision (Isaiah Whitehead going to Seton Hall, for example).  That's good for 12% overall.

Want a couple more staggering statistics?  17% of the 5-star recruits between 2009 and 2014 went to a single school:  Kentucky.  78% of the 5-stars ended up at one of just 16 schools.  Put another way, that means around 78% of the elite, 5-star talent ends up playing basketball for about 5% of all division 1 schools.

The reality seems to be that, unless you are amongst that group of schools, your chances of getting a 5-star to play basketball at your university are slim to none, even if he grows up in the shadow of your arena.

Does all of this mean Mark Fox shouldn't center his recruiting on the state of Georgia?  Absolutely not.  What it does mean is that "keep them in state," while a nice soundbite, doesn't come close to capturing the reality of recruiting in college basketball today, and losing a 5-star kid from the state of Georgia, while disappointing, may reflect more on college basketball as a whole than it does on the coaches in Athens.

And oh-by-the-way, what do all of those 16 schools that are recruiting at such a high level have in common?  They win.

It presents a bit of a Catch-22, of course, if you can't win without talent, but you can't get talent without winning, but Mark Fox shouldn't use it as an excuse and neither will I.  Put together two more 20-win seasons (a possibility given the talent already in Athens), and things may just start to change.

h/t ESPN

*I have no mileage or metric for this.  It is not scientific.  It was purely my judgment call.