Looks Are Deceiving: Signing Day Extravaganza is Anything But Special

Anyone with a functioning brain knows that high school player ratings are so much unadulterated bullspit. All of the so-called recruiting analysts/experts and slobbering announcers with drool buckets giving credence to the charade are doing a disservice to the fans and impressionable teenagers. Why can't the player pimps simply wait until the athletes compete in an actual game on a college court before rendering judgment on their ability at the next level?

Conducting a live press conference on ESPN's Signing Day Special announcing a teenager's college intentions is obscene. Even if celebrated Chicago product Jabari Parker announces his intentions a month later, it's nauseating to watch adults hold their collective breath to see if a pimple-faced kid dons their alma mater's cap.

What good are the prep player rankings anyway if the brainiacs can't pinpoint a prospect who will be an NCAA consensus first-team All-American two years later? In 2010, Creighton's Doug McDermott wasn't listed among the consensus Top 100 recruits. It's not as if no one saw him in Ames, Iowa, because his H.S. teammate, Harrison Barnes (North Carolina), ranked as the nation's premier player.

But previously-shunned McDermott, who rarely dunks to shine the spotlight on himself, emerged this preseason with a fellow "Great White Hope" - Indiana's Cody Zeller - as the top two candidates for national player of the year. McDermott isn't infallible, scoring a meager five points against UAB in mid-November. But even if he averaged five points per game, that would be a higher mark than the career averages posted by the following alphabetical list of frontcourters in the same class mistakenly rated higher than him coming out of high school: Evan Anderson (Wisconsin/0.5 points per game), Michael Cobbins (Oklahoma State/4.7), Demarco Cox (Mississippi/2.5), Keith Davis (Texas A&M/1.2), Carson Desrosiers (Wake Forest & Providence/4.4), Josh Hairston (Duke/2.1), James Johnson (Virginia & San Diego State/1.5), Cody Larson (Florida/0.5), Nate Lubick (Georgetown/3.9), Justin Martin (Xavier/3.4), Fab Melo (Syracuse/4.9), Rod Odom (Vanderbilt/3.2), Adreian Payne (Michigan State/4.8) and Melvin Tabb (Wake Forest & Kent State/1.5).

Seemingly incapable of calculating the difference between street ball and team ball, the recruiting gurus can't seem to assess backcourters any better. For instance, Michigan's Trey Burke, McDermott's principal competition for national POY, wasn't listed among the Top 100 in 2011. Again, it wasn't as if he was an unknown commodity insofar as Burke was a prep teammate of eventual Ohio State All-American Jared Sullinger. It would take you all week to read the list of players ranked ahead of Burke, McDermott, Indiana's Victor Oladipo, Gonzaga's Kelly Olynyk and Georgetown's Otto Porter Jr. when they left high school.

Elsewhere, guard Jeremy Lamb averaged 14.1 ppg in two seasons with 2011 NCAA champion Connecticut before leaving school early and becoming an NBA lottery pick (12th overall). But Lamb's scoring average is more than twice as high as those compiled by the following alphabetical list of guards in the same 2010 class incorrectly rated ahead of him entering college: Daniel Bejarano (Arizona & Colorado State/2.7 ppg), James Bell (Villanova/5.4), Vander Blue (Marquette/6.6), Rion Brown (Miami/5.7), Gary Franklin (California & Baylor/3.9), Crandall Head (Illinois & Southern Methodist/1.2), Jamail Jones (Marquette & Florida Gulf Coast/1.6), Jelan Kendrick (Memphis, Mississippi & UNLV/5.1 ppg), Tyler Lamb (UCLA & Long Beach State/5.8), Mychal Parker (Maryland/3.4), Stacey Poole Jr. (Kentucky & Georgia Tech/0.2), Casey Prather (Florida/1.6) and Jordan Sibert (Ohio State & Dayton/2.5).

What are the recruiting-wizard credentials of the chattering class? Never underestimate how gullible some observers can be if they don't let mistake-ridden regaling go in one ear and out the other until authentic evidence exists. At least let the latest-and-greatest phenom such as Kentucky center Norlens Noel supply some sort of next-level proof along the lines of his four-point debut against Duke.

Noel seems to have spent more time on his UK designer haircut than developing any sort of shooting touch. At times, it appears as if he and UCLA's Shabazz Muhammad are vying to become this year's Perry Jones III, the underachieving Baylor forward who exhibited the heart of an insect last season. Many teenagers toiling at a fast-food joint ply their boring trade with more zest than Noel and Muhammad, who each occasionally play so tentatively (AAU open-gym style) it looks like they are trying to avoid an injury that would cost them dearly as a probable high NBA draft choice although that is exactly what happened to Noel in mid-season.