Bias In Women's Recruiting Coverage?

Who has the best recruiting class in women’s basketball for 2002? It depends on whom you ask…or, in this case, what recruiting service you ask.

All-Star Girl’s Report (ASGR), Blue Star (BS), and School Sports (SS), three of the most widely used recruiting services, all rank Duke, Connecticut, and Tennessee as having the top three recruiting classes. However, if you probe into the individual rankings, some interesting themes emerge.

Lets take this school-by-school, player-by-player:

DUKE SIGNEEES

CONNECTICUT SIGNEES:

TENNESSEE SIGNEES:

ASGR lists Duke as the #1 class, followed by UConn and Tennessee. Blue Star ranks UConn first, followed by Duke and Tennessee. School Sports has not yet ranked the classes.

The differences are EXTREME. Brooke Smith is #7 in the ASGR rankings, but is only 33^rd in the Blue Star rankings. Willnett Crockett of UConn is either #11 or #35, depending on whom you ask. Tye’sha Fluker is ranked anywhere from #2 to #21.

So what accounts for these extreme differences? ASGR is based in the Southeast, is sponsored by adidas, and is run by individuals with strong ties to the ACC. ASGR’s rankings are handled by Mike White. ASGR tends to "bump up" the rankings for players from the Southeast, or who attend adidas camps, or who give verbal commitments to an ACC school. According to some insiders, Mike White is rather negative toward Geno Auriemma and the UConn and recruits and tends to downgrade them in the ASGR rankings.

By contrast, Blue Star is based in the Northeast, is sponsored by Nike, and is run by individuals with strong ties to the Big East. Blue Star’s rankings are handled by Mike Flynn. According to some insiders, Mike Flynn is a notorious hater of Pat Summitt and Tennessee, and he likes to downgrade her recruits (see the disparity above in the ranking of Tye’sha Fluker). Blue Star tends to bump up the rankings for players from the Northeast, or who attend Nike camps, or who give verbal commitments to a Big East school.

Sibyl Marshall, who runs various web sites for information about high school players, posting their statistics, all-state and all-America honors, rankings by national services, and invitations to elite national and regional camps, has documented the current bias in women’s recruiting. The following link details this bias, focusing on the contrast between the Blue Star and ASGR rankings based upon geography and camp attendees:

http://web.utk.edu/~smarshal/bias.htm

The hoopla over the rankings has more to do with politics than any of the recruiting services would like to admit. So what does this mean for the Class of 2002? In looking at all three ranking systems, Duke and Connecticut clearly are the top two classes, followed by Tennessee. But who has the top class?

One way to settle the dispute would be to take all of the different recruiting services and compose a "composite ranking" list. Sibyl Marshall has done that for the Class of 2001, compiling ASGR, Blue Star, School Sports, Rivals.com, and Greg Swaim’s top 25 rankings. That link is:

http://web.utk.edu/%7Esmarshal/2001comp.htm

Notice that under Sibyl’s composite system, Duke freshmen Monique Currie and Wynter Whitley rank fourth and fifth, respectively.

As Rivals and Greg Swaim have not yet released their rankings, there isn’t such a composite list available for the 2002 recruiting class. Then again, the only thing that really matters is what they demonstrate once they get on campus and lace them up…

- Barry Uhrman

President, Duke University Alumni Club of Arizona