Top 5 Class Could Make NC State Elite This Season

(All class rankings taken from 247sports.com and final rankings from KenPom; special thanks to alexjw7 for compiling the stats)

Bobby Bowden once famously downplayed his coaching acumen by acknowledging that it is good-to-great players that should be given the bulk of the credit for a program's success. Even our own Athletic Director, Debbie Yow, has been adamant about hiring coaches who can recruit at a high level. Recruiting well at NC State for all sports is a necessity and, as we saw in the past month, Mark Gottfried is locked in. For the first time in his tenure, Gottfried has landed a Top 5 recruiting class including 2 highly regarded 5-Star players. While not nearly the level of a UK or a Duke, with this class he has shown he can recruit nationally against elite company. Yet one major factor why UK and Duke continue to consecutively pull in these top classes has to do with their on-court success over the years. In order to constantly compete at their level of recruiting we have to start seeing more wins and less moral victories. NC State has yet to put a Top 25 team on the court consistently, but could our recent Top 5 recruiting rank predict how successful we'll be?

Recruiting Classes & KenPom Rankings

Top 5 Class of 2015	Final KenPom Ranking
UK	6
Duke	20
‘Zona	21
TAMU	19
tOSU	80
Top 5 Classes of 2014
Duke	4
UK	1
‘Zona	2
UNLV	100
Louisville	16
Top 5 Classes of 2013
UK	11
Kansas	12
Memphis	37
Indiana	67
Louisville	1
Top 5 Classes 2012
UK	67
UCLA	45
‘Zona	15
Baylor	29
U*NC	32
Top 5 Classes of 2011
UK	1
Duke	21
Louisville	14
‘Zona	52
Texas	30
Top 5 Classes of 2010
UK	5
OSU	1
Memphis	90
U*NC	14
‘Cuse	15

On the left you see the Top 5 recruiting classes for the past 6 years and beside each team is their KenPom finish at the end of the year. Obviously there are teams that make this list multiple times while you can see an outlier here or there. These outliers are important to our analysis because, as of right now, we are an outlier ourselves. Sure we've had 3 Top 25 classes under Gottfried before this one but Top 5 is in a different breath and this is the first time we've seen this at State in over a decade or more. This makes NC State an outlier as of now.

Teams & Order of KenPom Finish

Year-Team	Top 5 Classes
14 UK	1
13 UL	1
11 UK	1
10 tOSU	1
14 Zona	2
14 Duke	4
10 UK	5
15 UK	6
13 UK	11
13 KU	12
11 UL	14
10 UNC	14
12 Zona	15
10 Cuse	15
14 UL	16
15 TAMU	19
15 Duke	20
15 Zona	21
11 Duke	21
12 Baylor	29
11 Texas	30
12 UNC	32
13 Memphis	37
12 UCLA	45
11 Zona	52
13 IU	67
12 UK	67
15 tOSU	80
10 Memphis	90
14 UNLV	100

This section could be extremely telling. 8 of the teams that finished with a Top 5 class completed the season with a KenPom rating in the Top 10 and 14 of them finished in the Top 25 which is about as expected. Top 5 doesn't guarantee success though. 11 of these teams finished outside of the Top 25 and 6 of them finished 50 or higher in KenPom's ratings. How does this relate to a current outlier like NC State? Of the 6 teams that completely bottomed out despite their Top 5 recruiting class, 2 of them (IU, UNLV) were outliers who haven't appeared before or since, while Memphis & tOSU only appear twice. 8 of the teams that finished in the Top 10? Mostly UK, Duke, Arizona, Louisville...the usual suspects in college basketball. The implication here is that nearly 50% of the time, bringing in a Top 5 class means your team will be good the following year, but the teams that haven't appeared but once or twice in the Top 5 could very likely underachieve.

Order of KenPom Finish for Classes w/ Multiple 5 Stars

Top 5 Classes with 2 or more 5*	Year-Team
1	14 UK
1	13 UL
1	11 UK
4	14 Duke
5	10 UK
6	15 UK
11	13 UK
12	13 KU
14	10 UNC
15	12 Zona
15	10 Cuse
20	15 Duke
21	15 Zona
45	12 UCLA
52	11 Zona
67	12 UK
90	10 Memphis

BUT...GOOD NEWS everyone! NC State has the fortune of having something some of these other squads don't and that's TWO (count ‘em) TWO elite-level 5-Star players coming in. Of the 17 teams who brought in two or more 5-Star players, only 4 finished the season outside KenPom's Top 25. And of those 4 there is no particular trend to cause concern. Half of them are these outlier squads (UCLA, Memphis) while the other half are the usual suspects (UK, Zona). Kansas & Syracuse, which have only one Top 5 class, and U*NC, which has only 2, completed the year as KenPom Top 25 teams when bringing in multiple 5-Star players. With over 75% of these teams having great seasons on the court, it may be a sign that we can have more a little confidence staring NC State S*** in the face before 2016-2017 begins.

Average & Median KenPom Finishes

	Average KP	Median KP
Top 5 Class	27.6	17.5
Top 5 Class with 2 or more 5*	22.3	14

Lastly, looking at the averages and median finishes gives us good reason to have hope as well. Teams with Top 5 classes finish with a KenPom rating at about 28 on average with a median of 17.5. Teams that more closely resemble State by having multiple 5-Stars, finish at about 22 on average with a median of 14. Good ole Memphis/UNLV drags these overall numbers down while UK, alone, drives them higher but truthfully this is a good sign for NC State going into 2016-2017.

Look there are obviously a number of factors that go into how some of these teams finished. Injuries to account for, sub-par coaching (*cough* Pastner *cough*) but these last 6 recruiting classes show that if you can pull elite talent, you can have an elite team. This year we finished 4^th behind Duke, UK, & MSU with UCLA finishing 5^{th in} in recruiting. Note the presence of the usual suspects in the 2016 class but also three other squads who have only one prior Top 5 appearance between them. This year becoming our BEST year is more possible than it has been in a long time. So why not State? With a number of returning upperclassmen, universal depth, elite-level talent and an experienced coaching staff, the numbers say we can do something big this year. Lets hope that for once... numbers ain't bulls***.

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