BTI's Rants and Ramblings: Using Baseball To Define Cal's Recruits

It's baseball season in the country, meaning nothing else of note is really happening.  But the addition of two new assistant coaches, and their hopes of a renewed recruiting momentum, has me looking back on the totality of the recruiting era of John Calipari.  And I thought, why not put it in baseball terms?  So I tried to divide up the 63 incoming freshman recruits (no JC or transfers) under Calipari and rank them by home run, triple, double, single, and strikeout.  Some of these were really tough to decide upon but I put descriptions of each category underneath to try and give a better understanding of why I picked guys how I did. Home Run (14 out of 63, 22%) *players who were superstars at Kentucky or far exceeded expectations from recruiting rankings John Wall, Demarcus Cousins, Brandon Knight, Anthony Davis, MK-Gilchrist, Julius Randle, Karl Towns, Tyler Ulis, Jamal Murray, Malik Monk, De'Aaron Fox, Bam Adebayo, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Immanuel Quickley Triple (13 out of 63, 20%) *players who were highly productive and/or somewhat exceeded expectations Eric Bledsoe, Terrence Jones, Doron Lamb, Nerlens Noel, Willie Cauley-Stein, James Young, Andrew Harrison, Aaron Harrison, Kevin Knox, PJ Washington, Tyler Herro, Tyrese Maxey, Isaiah Jackson Double (15 out of 63, 24%) *players who made moderate impact, did what was expected, or 5-star players who slightly underperformed Marquis Teague, Kyle Wiltjer, Archie Goodwin, Alex Poythress, Dakari Johnson, Derek Willis, Dominique Hawkins, Devin Booker, Trey Lyles, Isaiah Briscoe, Hami Diallo, Nick Richards, Keldon Johnson, Ashton Hagans, BJ Boston Single (9 out of 63, 14%) *players who played but made minimal impact on the court Daniel Orton, Marcus Lee, Skal Labiessiere, Issac Humphries, Wenyen Gabriel, Quade Green, EJ Montgomery, Keion Brooks, Devin Askew Strikeout (12 out of 63, 19%) *players who made no tangible impact within the program Jon Hood, Stacey Poole, Ryan Harrow, Charles Matthews, Sacha Kileya-Jones, Tai Wynyard, Jarred Vanderbilt, Jemerl Baker, Kahlil Whitney, Johnny Juzang, Terrence Clarke, Cam'Ron Fletcher Now, keep in mind this does not rank the players by just how good a player they were.  Of course Nerlens Noel was a better player than Shai.  There are tons of examples of that throughout this list.  But I also wanted to take what the EXPECTATIONS of guys were coming to Lexington and how they ended up performing.  Shai and Quickley both far exceeded what we thought they would be.  Some of the guys on the strikeout list also went on to be successful other places.  But at Kentucky, they just made no impact.  You can decide for yourself how much of that rests on Calipari or how much just rests on those guys not yet developing. But I think it's interesting that 2/3 of Calipari recruits have absolutely dominated or exceeded expectations by the time their stint in Lexington ended.  That's a pretty good clip.  The numbers have declined over the last 3-4 years and hopefully Coleman and Antigua move us back to a 70-75% hit rate, but you just can't deny the recruiting success of the last 11 years.