Therein lies the problem with recruiting rankings. The #21 ranked 2014 class contained Lookout and Hatfied. Oh. but wait!! That 2014 class also contained:
Nicole Pendley---centerfielder as a freshman and sophomore.
Kelsey Arnold---third base as a freshman, shortstop as a sophomore
Lea Wodach----catcher as a sophomore
There is the defensive middle of a national title team: catcher, shortstop, centerfielder---all as sophomores.
Oh. And, there was that one other 2014 recruit:
Paige Parker---National Freshman of the Year, pitcher in the championship game as OU won the national title with four sophomores and a freshman (Caleigh Clifton) up the middle.
Wonder if that class might be ranked a bit higher upon reflection.
No question there are not absolutes in recruiting as it is not a exact science and projections are much less precise in the sports other than football because of more limited efforts to evaluate players and hence less data available. However, because of the level of summer AAU play for softball I suspect there may be a better assessment available for softball because their AAU programs are more developed than in women's basketball which is growing rapidly.
The touting services are mere attempts to project the uncertain future of a player/teams and the likelihood they will become an elite player/team for which you have both hits and misses. Just as FloSoftball may have under estimated the 2014 Sooner class the top rated 2015 class had its misses that did not truly fit the Sooners like Brittany Finney and Jayden Chestnut who have transferred and to date Kylie Lundberg who is yet to produce as projected coming out of high school but still on the roster.
Because of the immense availability of data recruiting services can best be evaluated for football and the statistics from one study is listed below. But results from the other sports would show similar results while probably having a higher error factor due to limited data/assessment. Still the systems are highly effective at projecting an
uncertain future. What is often forgotten is the miss factor which is relatively high for all ranking classifications.
Odds of Becoming a football All-American, by Recruiting Ranking
5–Star: 1 in 4.
Top 100: 1 in 6.
4–Star: 1 in 16.
3–Star: 1 in 56.
2–Star: 1 in 127.
All FBS Signees: 1 in 45.
I personally did an analysis of OU football signees from 2001-10 and determined that about 25% of OU's 5* signees were bust, about 50% of their 4* signees were bust and about 25% of their 3* signees were bust. They did not sign enough 2* and 1* athletes to make a statistical projection. Starters, backups and special teams players were considered successful signees.
I think the recruiting ranking are accurate enough to project that the future WCWS participants for the next 5 years will be produced 75%+ of the time (28-40) from the top 11 class recruiting rankings I presented in a earlier post on this thread. They have produced 14 of 16 participants the last two years and 28 of 40 the last 5 years which does not account for ASU where Clint Myers had ASU winning national championships and top recruiting classes. Include ASU and the number is 30-40.
http://www.cbssports.com/collegefootball/eye-on-college-football/21641769
