Abstract
NCAA men’s basketball teams are spending an increasing amount of money on recruiting expenditures in an effort to win more games. We examine the recruiting quality of both freshmen and returning players to determine the impact of recruiting on a power conference team’s success. In particular, we identify the point at which players of different recruiting quality begin to contribute to a team’s success and estimate the impact of returning players by year and position. We find that elite freshmen guards are the only position that immediately impacts a team’s success, while forwards and centers need one or more seasons to develop into a player that generates wins for his team. We conclude by noting how these results may inform coaches regarding the makeup of talent and positions on their roster.
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Notes
We also constructed a Returning Inexperienced Players variable to capture the number of players that did not play in 60 percent or more of the games in the previous season. This variable was not statistically significant in any model specification and the coefficients on other variables in the model were unaffected.
To address concerns relating to the fact that success is based upon current year wins, we also included a strength of schedule variable to adjust for the fact that some teams may play weaker schedules and therefore have more wins. This variable was not statistically significant in any model specification.
Elite Eight and Sweet 16 appearances were also constructed and neither variable had a significant impact on the number of wins, ceteris paribus.
One-star and two-star recruits did not significantly impact a school’s wins in any specification of the model.
The attrition rate for four-star players was significantly lower.
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Treme, J., Burrus, R.T. NCAA basketball: when does recruiting talent translate into wins for power conferences?. J Econ Finan 40, 735–753 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12197-015-9323-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12197-015-9323-9