FBCB: High school All-Americans

[kcchief19]

Is the high school All-America distinction an award of value or is it largely random/insignificant? I ask because in my current career I'm at Bradley and having marginal success (20-win seasons, NCAA tourney bids, back-to-back conference titles). During last season's recruiting, there were two All-Americans who were ranked 156 and 186 respectively.

They were the kind of players I normally would go after anyway, although I recruited one more heavily than the other initially. However, after the first month of recruiting I noticed that while the other wanted to go to a big school, nobody seemed to be going after him, so I jumped into the chance. I landed both and added another three-star player, so I was a bit surprised my class only ranked 70th.

Both players are solid, but I'm just wondering if the All-American label tells me anything more about this players than their ratings do.

[RPI-Fan]

Good question - I've always wondered the same thing, myself.

[rjolley]

In terms of whether an HS All American will do well in college, that's not always true. It's kind of like a college AA going to the next level. Some do well, some don't.

In terms of the top 10 rated players being the AA's, that's not always true either. Sometimes, there's a lot of good players at one position. Sometimes, a player is ranked highly at the beginning of the year, then doesn't have a good season, while lower ranked players do, and get picked to be an AA.

While the award does mean the player played well in high school and SHOULD play well in college, it doesn't always translate into that.

Edit: I've thought it worked this way in both RL and FBCB.

[MrBug708]

If they are a state all-american, it means they were the top player in their state at that position. I doubt you'll find that kind of ranking in California, but in a state like North Dakota, it's not unlikely.

IRL, you have Drew Netzeil (spelling) of Michigan winning Mr Basketball, but he's not even the second best player from the state. You can argue which of Malik Hairston or Joe Crawford is.

[BishopMVP]

The HS All-Americans seem to have the best stats among HS'ers in FBCB.

[finkenst]

Originally Posted by kcchief19

in my current career I'm at Bradley

i'm sorry.

[kcchief19]

Heh-heh. Actually, I started this career as a "real-life" career with my goal being to become head coach of my alma mater, the Missouri Tigers. I started at the bottom with Savannah State, bailed after four seasons for the first good job that came along, Coppin State. I was there for five years before I decided to take the Bradley job. It took a while to rebuild Bradley. It was my eleventh season at Bradley when I landed the two All-Americans, who incidentally were both all-state, but neither Mr. Basketball in their state.

I redshirted them in my 12th season and after the season I got a couple of job offers that I seriously considered taking, but decided to stink around and see how these guys did and I had a senior coming back who was a first-team all-American and two-time conference player of the year. I decided then and there that I wasn't going to leave Bradley until Missouri came calling.

So I reject the Louisville, Tennessee and Purdue offers and hit Head Coach Round. Right there in the mailbox is the offer to coach Missouri. I thought about it for a while and finally decided to take the Missouri job. I'm still keeping tabs on those guys. We're about halfway through their freshmen seasons and one is the first guy off the bench and the other is only getting garbage time minutes, but the team is pretty good right now. I expect one will start as a sophomore for sure.

But so far, neither seems to be any better than their ratings indicated, so at least in the case of these two guys, the All-American distinction does not seem to indicate any initial predisposition for greatness.