AllBuffs | Unofficial fan site for the University of Colorado at Boulder Athletics programs
This is a sample guest message. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
-
Prime Time. Prime Time. Its a new era for Colorado football. Consider signing up for a club membership! For $20/year, you can get access to all the special features at Allbuffs, including club member only forums, dark mode, avatars and best of all no ads ! But seriously, please sign up so that we can pay the bills. No one earns money here, and we can use your $20 to keep this hellhole running. You can sign up for a club membership by navigating to your account in the upper right and clicking on "Account Upgrades". Make it happen!
Soccer, Volleyball or Lacrosse - most likely natty?
- Thread starter Buffnik
- Start date
I would agree with lacrosse- another major reason, of course, being is it's a developing sport, so I'd guess there's not quite as much tradition and competition to fight as in volleyball or soccer.
Using RPI to count the number of D1 teams in the various sports, lacrosse had 112 D1 teams last season (http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/lacrosse-women/d1/ncaa-womens-lacrosse-rpi), while volleyball (http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/volleyball-women/d1/ncaa-womens-volleyball-rpi) and soccer (http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-women/d1) have 334 and 333 teams, respectively, competing in D1 this season.
Of course, I believe a common college sport truism is that team success is usually at least 50% about recruiting in any sport. For the reference of fans who follow college basketball, I'd say sports like volleyball and soccer are at least as concentrated as basketball as to where top recruits go. I haven't found a recruiting service that ranks the top 100 seniors, or school recruiting classes, for lacrosse. I'd guess (????) the big traditional lacrosse powers*** get more than their share of top recruits, but have NO IDEA how concentrated it is compared to volleyball or soccer.
(***In the last 13 years (per http://www.ncaa.com/history/soccer-women/d1), only Maryland, North Carolina, and Northwestern have won lacrosse national championships, while I believe a few other teams (like Syracuse) are also traditionally very strong.)
Re recruiting in the other sports-
In volleyball (which I follow most closely)-
b) I'd say maybe 2 teams (???) a decade also rise by "catching the brass ring" with great younger coaching hires, and/ or having a strong 2-3 year period via coaching and/ or "hidden gem players" that moves THEM into the elite category in the minds of top future recruits.
I don't have a paid subscription to the main ranking website (topdrawersoccer.com), but based on the free "teaser" part of their final 2017 class rankings (https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/clu...2017-girls-recruiting-class-rankings_aid42233), 2 teams (Stanford and UCLA) received 5 of the top 10 ranked players themselves, so would guess the concentration may be just as great (if not greater) than volleyball.
Using RPI to count the number of D1 teams in the various sports, lacrosse had 112 D1 teams last season (http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/lacrosse-women/d1/ncaa-womens-lacrosse-rpi), while volleyball (http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/volleyball-women/d1/ncaa-womens-volleyball-rpi) and soccer (http://www.ncaa.com/rankings/soccer-women/d1) have 334 and 333 teams, respectively, competing in D1 this season.
Of course, I believe a common college sport truism is that team success is usually at least 50% about recruiting in any sport. For the reference of fans who follow college basketball, I'd say sports like volleyball and soccer are at least as concentrated as basketball as to where top recruits go. I haven't found a recruiting service that ranks the top 100 seniors, or school recruiting classes, for lacrosse. I'd guess (????) the big traditional lacrosse powers*** get more than their share of top recruits, but have NO IDEA how concentrated it is compared to volleyball or soccer.
(***In the last 13 years (per http://www.ncaa.com/history/soccer-women/d1), only Maryland, North Carolina, and Northwestern have won lacrosse national championships, while I believe a few other teams (like Syracuse) are also traditionally very strong.)
Re recruiting in the other sports-
In volleyball (which I follow most closely)-
- I'd assume that usually 6-8 of the top 10 prepvolleyball.com "Senior Aces" each season go to one of the 5-6 top traditional schools which almost always have top recruiting classes every 2-3 years, with Texas, Stanford, USC, Nebraska, Florida and Penn State coming to mind right now as being percieved by young recruits as THE elite 6 programs. (Note- it obviously isn't all about recruiting, however. I believe, at least based on some Prepvolleyball forum comments, Florida has had some very strong classes and individual recruits, but I believe it's been awhile since they've reached the Final 4. Of course, being filled with passionate opinionated fans, many in Volleytalk also like to snipe at Texas, which has "only" won one championship (2009) over many years (1995 was their latest championship before 2009) while considered to get overall THE MOST top players. I must say I often chuckle a little at those Texas snipes, however, as the Longhorns ALWAYS seem to make the Final 4 (at least the last decade or so I've been following the sport more closely), which the VAST majority of programs' fans would consider a dream season.)
- And, probably at least 2 of the remaining top 10 ranked players each season are always going to end up at one of the few other currently "popular" or lesser traditional power tier schools, with schools like UCLA, Oregon, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Washington right now popping up in my mind being in that 2nd category.
- Therefore, with that recruiting concentration, I assume it's VERY hard for other teams to ever reach an upper echelon for any one season, let alone becoming a top (say Final 4 or Elite 8) perennial program.
- Of course, every decade or so a couple teams move into or out of the elite categories above:
b) I'd say maybe 2 teams (???) a decade also rise by "catching the brass ring" with great younger coaching hires, and/ or having a strong 2-3 year period via coaching and/ or "hidden gem players" that moves THEM into the elite category in the minds of top future recruits.
- I guess one other way some teams rise, at minimum for awhile, is religious schools that happen to have enough top players over a 4 year period strongly relate to and want to attend schools associated with that religion. (2014 NCAA finalist BYU is the latest example I can think of. Going forward, it will be interesting (for me at least) to see how high another religious school, Notre Dame, can rise over the next few seasons. It's not a traditional volleyball power, but obviously is a big traditional "name" in college sports, AND they also hired a legendary coach (away from Washington) a couple seasons ago.)
I don't have a paid subscription to the main ranking website (topdrawersoccer.com), but based on the free "teaser" part of their final 2017 class rankings (https://www.topdrawersoccer.com/clu...2017-girls-recruiting-class-rankings_aid42233), 2 teams (Stanford and UCLA) received 5 of the top 10 ranked players themselves, so would guess the concentration may be just as great (if not greater) than volleyball.