Final Stats for Kentucky’s Recruiting Class

Unless you’ve been living under the most unmovable of rocks, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Kentucky’s banner recruiting class by now. The #1 ranked class is widely considered by many experts as the best recruiting class of all-time. Jerry Meyer of 247 Sports took it even further last week on Twitter when responding to a fan’s tweet. When asked about this classes ranking if it were hypothetically split down the middle, Meyer responded “probably do have two #1 classes.”  That’s certainly high acclaim for a group of kids that have never set foot on a college court, but from all accounts, this group should be able to live up to the expectations.  While the hype is real and fans can’t wait to see the kids suit up, unfortunately for us, the all star circuit has drawn to a close, leaving us with limited viewing opportunities going forward. Because both the regular and all star seasons have ended, I though this would be the appropriate opportunity to provide the final statistics for all of Kentucky’s recruits.

First and foremost, let’s state the obvious, high school stats are notoriously unreliable for a number of reasons. First, they’re certainly not the best predictor of future performance because of the level of opposing competition and the number of quality teammates.  Second, at the high school level, statistics generally aren’t kept in the greatest detail (if they’re even kept at all). So if you’re interpreting the below chart as concrete and absolute, you probably shouldn’t for the above reasons. However, if you’re curious on how this season’s recruits performed as seniors in high school, this is the post for you.

(I added Julius Randle’s performances in the McDonald’s All American Game and the Nike Hoop Summit to give a better sample.)

As you can see from the above chart, the categories for most players are limited to points per game, rebounds per game, and games played. Also note that games played are not the actual number of games played, but rather the games where these players had statistics tracked.

As previously stated, it’s difficult to conclude anything meaningful from these numbers, after all, many players lack season data for important categories like shooting percentage, assists, steals, and blocks. However, some like the Harrison Twins and Marcus Lee have very well documented statistics in just about every category.  Personally, I found this exercise to be a bit frivolous, but overall, it’s interesting to see how players performed before their college careers began. Everyone should know by now to use caution when examining these numbers as very few players match high school statistics with their college counterparts (Nerlens Noel was surprisingly an exception to that rule). Again, take these with a grain of salt as they’re not meant to be used in an analytic way. This data is meant to be a fun look at how our future players performed in the past. Statistics will assuredly drop for ever single player next year given the increase in opponent competition and the caliber of teammates. However, their immense talent will remain, which will be thrilling for all Kentucky fans.