I think that is commonly agreed upon that high school stats are meaningless. I just have a question.  I am looking at 2 players who are very similar, and both have a defense of 70.  (important since I am playing man).  However, the one 70 D guy averaged 1.7 steals a game, and the other averaged .1 steals per game.  Yet they  both have  a 70 defensive rating.

My question is do these high school steals translate into steals at the college level?  Is  the kid with a 70 D rating, and .1 HS steals a great stopper, but poor theif?  Thank you

What is the difference in speed?

Basically negligble.  Suprisingly the guy who averaged .1 steals per game was 45 speed, and the guy who averaged 1.7 was 40. The guy who averaged .1 steals was more athletic.

they both are SFs.

The only HS stat that has any relevance is FT shooting, which directly correlates to the letter grade the player will have as a freshman. Everything else is just window dressing. If the two have equal defense ratings, look at the players' other ratings to determine which one you like better, not the HS stats.

I'm not so sure that HS stats are just window dressing. Seble mentioned something in a dev chat not too long ago about the HS stats being generated based on player attributes. If you search based on HS ppg, you will see mostly decent scoring attributes at the top of the list (LP and PER combos). You would still have to throw out the low SPD, ATH, and DE types to find suitable targets. With the old engine, there was a stronger correlation between ppg and ST. I think the correlation has changed to something more meaningful.

Posted by theeyetest on 12/30/2010 11:58:00 PM (view original):
I'm not so sure that HS stats are just window dressing. Seble mentioned something in a dev chat not too long ago about the HS stats being generated based on player attributes. If you search based on HS ppg, you will see mostly decent scoring attributes at the top of the list (LP and PER combos). You would still have to throw out the low SPD, ATH, and DE types to find suitable targets. With the old engine, there was a stronger correlation between ppg and ST. I think the correlation has changed to something more meaningful.

They might be indicative of the ratings a kid has, but I don't think they harbor any independent value that a person should look at when recruiting (FT percentage and possibly GPA notwithstanding).

I think there's a correlation between the PPG/FG%/RPG et al. listed as a kid's high school stats and his overall ratings numbers, but since you can already see the ratings on every kid in the game, there's no new information coming from the HS stats. The rating numbers will always tell the story, so if, in this case, two potential recruits each have a 70 Def,, all I'm trying to say is base your determination of which one is "better" off the other ratings (ATH, SPD, etc.) and potentials (if you know them) rather than on whether one has X steals or something per game as a HS stat and the other having Y. 

other than FT, the high school stats contain so little info that they are not worth using even as a tiebreaker, i think

I'd look at noncore skillz

"They might be indicative of the ratings a kid has, but I don't think they harbor any independent value that a person should look at when recruiting (FT percentage and possibly GPA notwithstanding)."

I think this is right. I think a coach would get into trouble signing players based on HS ppg, but I do think it is a useful filter method when searching for recruits. Looking closer at HS ppg has adjusted my thinking a little on what makes a good scorer. Over the last several seasons at Hood, I have placed a much higher value on LP and PER after looking closer at HS ppg. Previously, I would discount LP ratings in bigs in favor of ATH and focus on ATH, SPD, and BH in guards. I love ATH, and my teams have done well with lots of it, but I'm not sure that it impacts scoring as much as I previously thought. 

As for spg, I have never had a good feel for exactly what goes into it. In looking at the Wooden DIII leaders in steals, DE doesn't seem to matter much. Here are the DE ratings for the top 10 in steals: 21, 49, 20, 30, 18, 25, 71, 50, 37, 21. Just eyeballing the numbers, it looks like they either have high SPD, a combination of ATH and SPD, or high ST plus some ATH and SPD.  

they probably all press-- that's the most important factor IMO.