[81alum]

Thanks Bob.  If you or anyone has access to rating services that go back before 2005, please help us to fill in the ?s.  It might be very interesting to do a statistical analysis of how closely the pre college rankings predict college success for Stanford players.

Since I have just finished reading 20 years of press releases to try to fill this in, I thought I would share a few interesting additional tidbits for WBB fans.

Candice Wiggins was ranked within the top 5 nationally.  In press releases, she says it came down to Stanford and Duke for her, and she picked Stanford.  Duke seems to have always been an important competitor for Stanford recruits.  Brooke Smith is the other obvious example. 

Kristin Newlin had a 4.0 GPA in high school and was the Wyoming Gatorade Player of the Year--both exactly like frosh Kaylee Johnson.  I did not remember that we had another highly successful player from Wyoming.

It is amazing to see all the signing-day quotes for twenty years of recruits.  It is as if they all read from exactly the same script.  "I chose Stanford because of its excellence in basketball and its excellence in academics."  "It was the best combination of both."  While this may seem obvious to us, it is very powerful to see the mantra repeated over and over and over with virtually every single high school kid who elects to come.  That is now, has always been, and always will be our competitive recruiting edge over other programs.  Stanford recruits have to have an appreciation for our academic excellence.

In reading through the press releases and news stories I was struck at how many of our players were 4.0 or better students.  It is not just a few,  but I get the impression that it may be the majority of them.  Then again, that should not particularly surprise us.  I had a 4.0 but became a lot more humble when I went to my 1977 orientation and discovered that 40% of the entering class also had 4.0 gpas in high school.  Why should the basketball teams be any different?

[81alum]

Thanks Bob.  If you or anyone has access to rating services that go back before 2005, please help us to fill in the ?s.  It might be very interesting to do a statistical analysis of how closely the pre college rankings predict college success for Stanford players.

Since I have just finished reading 20 years of press releases to try to fill this in, I thought I would share a few interesting additional tidbits for WBB fans.

Candice Wiggins was ranked within the top 5 nationally.  In press releases, she says it came down to Stanford and Duke for her, and she picked Stanford.  Duke seems to have always been an important competitor for Stanford recruits.  Brooke Smith is the other obvious example. 

Kristin Newlin had a 4.0 GPA in high school and was the Wyoming Gatorade Player of the Year--both exactly like frosh Kaylee Johnson.  I did not remember that we had another highly successful player from Wyoming.

It is amazing to see all the signing-day quotes for twenty years of recruits.  It is as if they all read from exactly the same script.  "I chose Stanford because of its excellence in basketball and its excellence in academics."  "It was the best combination of both."  While this may seem obvious to us, it is very powerful to see the mantra repeated over and over and over with virtually every single high school kid who elects to come.  That is now, has always been, and always will be our competitive recruiting edge over other programs.  Stanford recruits have to have an appreciation for our academic excellence.

In reading through the press releases and news stories I was struck at how many of our players were 4.0 or better students.  It is not just a few,  but I get the impression that it may be the majority of them.  Then again, that should not particularly surprise us.  I had a 4.0 but became a lot more humble when I went to my 1977 orientation and discovered that 40% of the entering class also had 4.0 gpas in high school.  Why should the basketball teams be any different?