Ranking the top five incoming freshman classes in the SEC
HawgBeat analyst Jackson Collier ranks the incoming freshmen classes in the SEC.
arkansas.rivals.com
For the longest time, high school recruiting in the SEC was dominated by Kentucky, primarily due to Arkansas head coach John Calipari. He was responsible for accumulating more talent out of the high school ranks than any other coach or program in history, but things have changed in recent years.
While Calipari is still landing a great deal of talent out of high school, the addition of the transfer portal has changed every coach's recruiting approach. That, paired with the SEC's investment into coaches and basketball as a whole, has made the conference one of the best in the sport and a desired landing spot for top recruits. As such, the SEC is regularly collecting some of the most talent out of the portal and out of the high school ranks.
Recently, HawgBeat ranked the top five portal classes in the SEC, so as we continue our series of roster rankings, we will be looking at high school classes going into next year.
Worth noting, this ranking will not simply be the five highest-ranked in the Rivals database, because those rankings can be due to any number of factors, including volume. Instead, these rankings will attempt to measure each incoming freshman class by expected impact, quality of players overall, and fit around the rest of the roster.
Unlike the portal, fewer freshmen can lead to a higher ranking on this list, partly because freshmen classes are growing smaller and smaller with the portal being used so widely and frequently. Also, there is a track record for highly-touted freshmen contributing at a high level right away.
Now let's dive into HawgBeat analyst Jackson Collier's high school class rankings...
CONTINUE READING HERE
