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Returning Talent Revisited

Publication Date: February 7, 2006

We Don't Rebuild, Son, We Reload

Well, that didn't turn out so well.

Last week, I introduced a method of trying to spot the top teams in this preseason (yes, I know the season has started for many teams, bear with me here) based on identifying who had the largest productivity from last year returning. It was an interesting list, but I mentioned that in order to test it I'd like to look at last year with the benefit of hindsight to see how it did. Here are the top 25 in returning talent from 2004 to 2005:

 # Team                       RCAA

 1 South Carolina             133.63
 2 College of Charleston      127.09
 3 Georgia                    122.56
 4 Notre Dame                 120.33
 5 Louisiana State            104.25
 6 William and Mary            92.86
 7 Oral Roberts                89.85
 8 Oregon State                88.73
 9 George Mason                86.83
10 Baylor                      85.56
11 Winthrop                    85.40
12 Wichita State               84.07
13 Miami, Florida              83.92
14 Mississippi                 78.20
15 Rice                        77.04
16 Tulane                      75.48
17 Dallas Baptist              75.26
18 Texas                       73.11
19 Tennessee                   66.91
20 Mississippi State           66.85
21 Vanderbilt                  66.12
22 Louisiana-Lafayette         65.95
23 Army                        65.62
24 Washington                  62.66
25 Arizona State               61.18

Obviously, this doesn't resemble a reasonable postseason top 25 in any shape or fashion, so I'd say it's a writeoff, almost. While it's obviously not useful as a complete ranking tool, it did spot some teams that were completely missed by the preseason polls -- both Oregon State and Baylor show up in this top 10 despite being either missed completely by the polls or underrated by everyone but BA; this year, though, there aren't really any teams that match that profile of big-conference teams missing in the polls but present here. Overall, though, the twin killing of overemphasizing the value of star players and the inherent variability of player performance, especially at this age, limits its usefulness.

Just to pad a bit, and because it's mildly interesting, here's a chart of everyone in any of last year's preseason top 25's or the end-of-year ISR top 25:

Team                      BA    CB    ESPN  NCBWA ISR  

Texas                      4     1     1     1     2
Cal State Fullerton        3     3     2     2     3
Miami, Florida             5     2     3     4    26
Tulane                     1     4     5     3     4
Louisiana State            2     5     4     6    20
Stanford                   6     6     6     5    16
South Carolina             7     8     7     7    34
Georgia                   10     9     8    10    47
Arizona State              9    11     9     9     9
Texas A&M                 13    10    10    12    40
North Carolina            14     7    11     8    36
Arizona                   12    12    12    14    13
Georgia Tech              19    13    15    11    18
Rice                      18    15    14    13    11
Mississippi               16    16    18    17     6
Washington                 8    17    12    15    22
Long Beach State          22    14    16    18    10
Florida State             27    18    19    16    25
Notre Dame                20    20    20    20    98
Florida                   15    22    17    21    14
Vanderbilt                17    38    22    34    37
Clemson                   36    21    23    23    23
Baylor                    11    25    21    33     8
Oklahoma State            23    23    26    27    55
Arkansas                  26    33    24    29    21
Wichita State             39    26    28    24    35
Mississippi State         28    19    27    19    27
Texas Christian           21    37    25    22    30
East Carolina             32    30    30    31    59
Virginia                  35    27    29    32    57
Central Florida           37    24    36    25    70
Florida Atlantic          33    30    39    28    61
Oral Roberts              24     -    34    35    69
Winthrop                  25    28    37    26    42
Oregon State               -     -     -     -     1
Southern California        -     -     -     -     5
Nebraska                   -     -     -     -     7
Pepperdine                 -     -     -     -    12
Cal Poly                   -     -     -     -    15
San Francisco              -     -     -     -    17
California                 -     -     -     -    19
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Boyd's World-> Breadcrumbs Back to Omaha-> Returning Talent Revisited About the author, Boyd Nation