WNBA teams draft according to need. They don't always draft the best player available.

There is a tendency of some rating services to favor posts over guards. The taller posts are often more dominant against smaller athletes in high school skewing perception of ability. Once they reach college and play against players their own size that talent gap tends to shrink.

Board and on the Boneyard. But you needn't post there, but please post here! We never even heard how you felt about the Final Four. Miss your insights.

Signed,
A Fan

So many more posters now after the Diggins years that not sure I can provide anything worthy that isn't already covered.

There was a point around 2008-2009 that The Bench was chided for not enough posts. I believe the exact "threat" was that the McGraw's Bench would be dissolved and we would have to utilize the Olympic sports board. Never mind that the baseball board had less posts and no such threat levied against them. I remember pointing that out to board ops. Back then I made a concentrated effort to try to post just so I could do my small part to keep the threats at bay.

As for the NCAA title...I think my reaction can best be demonstrated by paraphrasing my Facebook post to friends: "I've been so invested in this team for over 20 years that I'm adding THEIR national championship to MY resume."

Still lurk all over place :)

player like Mackenzie Engram (Georgia) to Atlanta, Amarah Coleman (Depaul) to Chicago, Leslie Robinson (Princeton) to New York, or Carlie Wagner to Minnesota. That also includes their notoriety which inflates all the UConn players or Final 4 participants or record holders. Sometimes it's a combination of proximity and notoriety like Kelsey Mitchell to Indiana or Robinson who happens to be President Obama's niece. The WNBA doesn't sell out so their players are a big part of what they market. We see that with Skylar and her polished role promoting the league. Winning is most important but other than the special top players, I do think most teams can fill their needs with free agents (experienced who played in Europe or even college FAs) so these other factors play in to the draft. There are so few players that make WNBA rosters it's a different ball game.

..like Blue Star.

Take a look at the link to the Top Ten Rankings:

- In 2019, guard Celeste Taylor is ranked #4 in the country, considerably higher than the other rankings:
- In 2020, Kylee Watson, whose star has been fading, is BS's #1 and Maddie Burke is #9.

What do these three players all have in common? They all play for the Philly Belles, run by Mike Flynn, who also owns Blue Star.

This is not say Taylor, Watson and Burke are all not going to end up being productive D1 players, but vested interests can often nudge a ranking here or there, even at a young age.

And it's not to say that Flynn and his Blue Star cohorts can't give a spot-on appraisal. It's just that sometimes business priorities and assessments get in the same box....That's why I always take an average (or something like that) of these ratings services.

• Click here for link at http://www.bluestarbb.com/index.php?rankyear=2019

attend THEIR camps. And ASGR has camps as well. Does Dan Olson, or is he the lone exception?

...his primary bread and butter.

impressed by all the events he attends, stating that no one sees more HS players than he does. I didn't used to think very highly of him (he was the only person to rank Kayla McBride in the 80's when everyone else had her around 20th), but I have a much better opinion of him now.

No one, or, at least very few, like reducing people or peoples’ activities to numbers. It’s just inaccurate and wrong. “I am not a number, I am a person!” However, that’s what we do. With everything in life, we can only use symbols. Some, like language, are better than others. Rating a ballplayer with a number, even when it’s is an average of four or more rating systems, as Dillon suggests and I have always done, is just distasteful. As the responses suggest:

It’s arbitrary or at the least subjective.
It’s bias toward taller or more mature girls.
It’s bias toward whether one participates in the rater’s events or camps.
It’s bias toward Philly Belles for Blue Star manager Mike Flynn.
There is no scientific method for coming up with the rating, it’s personal judgement and there’s even turnover for those making those judgements.
Girls physically, emotionally, and motivationally change especially when young.
Not only are ratings inaccurate for these and other reasons, which we have discussed in the past, but I especially like rjp172’s and Domerduck’s approaches from the other end. They questioned using the draft as an accurate measure for testing who are the best players. So there are problems on both ends!

Except for SixShutouts, who caught the main gist of the post, all the responses were generally concerned about the problems with ratings. (Note, I also embrace SixShutouts’ point that there is more differentiation among the top 3 or 5 or 10 girls than the 40th girl. I use that in Baba’s transmogrified ratings, that, up to now, I have been to shy to share.)

But the acknowledged problems with the ratings was not the thrust of the post. It’s beneficial to periodically rehash the apparent dangers, and we can feel good about ourselves for doing so. The thrust and purpose of the post was to explore factually, not emotionally or theoretically, if ratings were predictors of the WNBA Draft.

Almost shockingly they were! The first three are uncanny! One could say that, except for the outliers, Azura Stevens and Victoria Vivians, the ratings are incredibly prescient. Also we know through the years that the number one draft choice is often the number one rated high school player four years earlier! It’s crazy given all the practical problems!

How is this possible? As I said earlier, is the small sample of 15 from this year’s class an anomaly? Is this just dumb luck? Or, are the perceived problems (on both ends) rather small in comparison to the amount of work that these rating systems perform to get such accurate results?

All are welcome to do a larger sample. Or try a different year. I will probably run this test again next year, but I welcome further research currently.

tinker with the composite ratings as well, comparing how well teams did with less and seeing how teams blew it with great recruiting success. I think there is a lot of information there. The composite rating explains a ton of the success players have in college.

Keep up the analyses! I'm a fan, not a detractor. And I think I speak for most posters on the Bench and more specifically, for most of the people that responded to this thread!

No, seriously, thank you, although I'm a little worried that you feel you had to say that. (another wink) I'm a fan of yours, also, but you should know that.

I realize that some of my posts may come off as slightly confrontational. It's mostly for entertainment value. I love a good discussion and will often take either side. In college I was known as "the person who could room with anyone", so I'm very accommodating in real life, possibly to the point of wishy washy.

There is one thing that concerns me. When I check my profile, I have 1 person who has highlighted me, and two people who are ignoring me. What does that even mean? Do my posts not show up? It must make for some curious threads. I'm saddened because instead of just not reading my posts, they specifically want to tell me I'm being ignored. I believe you can please everybody, if fact, I think it's a duty.

Anyway, I find the posters on McGraw's Bench to be extraordinarily considerate. I would hate to be the one not pulling my weight.

There is so much I'd like to explore if I had the time. "How well teams did with less and seeing how teams blew it with great recruiting success" would be fascinating. Again, thanks, and I really enjoy and look forward to your posts, (…and you may confront, argue, and make fun of me whenever you wish—especially when appropriate.)

Just stay in your own lane. Condescension is my job around here, dammit.

Nine people are ignoring me, so you have a way to go. I'm certain there are others with far more than nine people ignoring them, but I'm working on catching them.

Now that I've been advised of this (thanks Baba, I think), my thought would be similar to the line about papers: a poster that has no enemies has no friends!

but I think I earned those when I got on a high horse mostly on Rock's House. I do have more highlighting me than ignoring me but I'm not sure what that means either.

The bottom line is we get a chance to read your opinions and post our own if we are so inclined. It certainly feels more productive than solitaire, but you never know.

I checked my account and now I'm even with 2 and 2. That was so sweet, if that was you.

the top 15 or 20 prospects in a given year and then compare that list with the WNBA draft four years later or with more of a comparison of how well they did in their college careers.

That may be easier. I already have the top 15, 20, or 36 players (the 3 rounds of the draft) by average rating available for years 2014 through 2018. If anyone would like to see those lists I could easily post them.

weeks during the summer. We could then discuss how those players did during their college careers and see if we can find any common factors that predict success for them and for their teams. Their WNBA draft status would be another marker to note.

1. As a nit, I think you should exclude foreign players from the calculation (Vadeeva and Gulich) and slide up the American and Canadian-born players so that you're comparing apples to apples (North American players as ranked in HS and as selected in the WNBA draft among US/Canadian players).

2. Without looking at the raw rankings, it seemed that the top 6 ranked HS players performed up to expectation. (your 3 or 4 sigma cases that were clearly better. The next set of players were closer together and more difficult to separate). It would be interesting to see if this occurred regularly.

3. It might be interesting to look at ranked players who didn't live up to expectations and speculate why that happened (too high an initial ranking, twiners who were affected by college game, failure to develop, etc.)

I think I understand point #2. Am I right in stating the proposition as perhaps, as players are rated farther from the top, the differentiation is more difficult and thus the ratings may be less accurate? Sounds reasonable. I agree it could be developed by more testing.

Point #3, I agree would be an interesting exercise. I would guess injury would be a big factor along with ones you mention. But that is untested.

If you consider the standard bell-shaped curve, there are fewer people at the extremes and they stand out more. As you move to the next levels, there are more people and it's much harder to differentiate. As examples. it's easier to name a first-team All America squad than the fourth team; or draftniks agree on the top 5 NFL draftees and disagree on the next 20 because there's not as much to pick between them.