It is all very exciting. So many very talented players on our lists. Ashten Pretchel would be terrific, by all accounts.
By now the coaches probably know enough about all the 2019 prospects to know whether they might be admissible or definitely won't be admissible, so they may make decisions and move on from one player to another as academic information comes to them.
We fans don't have access to that academic information--only what players choose to share publicly, which often is nothing and at other times can be misleading. Sometimes we find a newspaper article about a player that lists a gpa or somesuch--and those gpas are often old, may be exaggerations by an enthusiastic high school coach, and don't reveal anything about the rigor of the classes. So we have much less of the relevant information to prognosticate about who we successfully recruit than fans at most other universities.
That makes our annual guessing came both more exciting--and more frustrating. Stanford is recruiting players largely on the basis of private (and confidential) information unavailable to us fans. Like fans everywhere, we can read the basketball reports. Unlike fans elsewhere, that is not close to being all we need to know.
For example, has anyone seen anything about Amihere's academics? She is my number one hope, but I don't think I have even read an optimistic coach talking about how great she is in the classroom. I hope she is a 4.0 --but I just don't know.
When a player like Pretchel lists us as one of her three, presumably she knows something about Stanford and she thinks she might have the academics. But do we know more? Presumably when there is a visit someone (either the player or the coaches) thinks the player might have the academics. Presumably when the coaches visit a player we know they think she might be admissible. And those are the tea leaves we have to work with--not a lot.
By now the coaches probably know enough about all the 2019 prospects to know whether they might be admissible or definitely won't be admissible, so they may make decisions and move on from one player to another as academic information comes to them.
We fans don't have access to that academic information--only what players choose to share publicly, which often is nothing and at other times can be misleading. Sometimes we find a newspaper article about a player that lists a gpa or somesuch--and those gpas are often old, may be exaggerations by an enthusiastic high school coach, and don't reveal anything about the rigor of the classes. So we have much less of the relevant information to prognosticate about who we successfully recruit than fans at most other universities.
That makes our annual guessing came both more exciting--and more frustrating. Stanford is recruiting players largely on the basis of private (and confidential) information unavailable to us fans. Like fans everywhere, we can read the basketball reports. Unlike fans elsewhere, that is not close to being all we need to know.
For example, has anyone seen anything about Amihere's academics? She is my number one hope, but I don't think I have even read an optimistic coach talking about how great she is in the classroom. I hope she is a 4.0 --but I just don't know.
When a player like Pretchel lists us as one of her three, presumably she knows something about Stanford and she thinks she might have the academics. But do we know more? Presumably when there is a visit someone (either the player or the coaches) thinks the player might have the academics. Presumably when the coaches visit a player we know they think she might be admissible. And those are the tea leaves we have to work with--not a lot.