The relationship between NCAA college basketball recruiting strategies and team success

Abstract

The study explored whether there is a relationship between the different strategies (based on past outcomes) used by college basketball teams while recruiting and how successful teams are after implementing their specific recruiting strategy. The study analyzed data from ten conferences in NCAA Division One Men’s College Basketball over six seasons (2013-14 to 2018-19). For analysis, a K-Means Cluster Analysis was used to identify different recruiting groups (clusters) among teams based on the number of five stars signed, the number of first-season (freshman) departures to the NBA draft, and the number of second through fourth-year departures to the NBA draft by a team. Based on the results from the cluster analysis, an OLS regression was implemented to test the relationship between recruiting clusters and team success (winning percentage) in the regular season, along with other university characteristics. The last part of the analysis consisted of an ordered logistic regression to test the relationship between these same clusters/university characteristics and the number of appearances in the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament by a team. The results concluded that there was no significant effect on regular-season performance based on team recruiting clusters, but there was an effect on NCAA tournament appearances with teams who appeared in clusters “OneAndDone” and “HighRecDev”.