New questions-dallasoliver/T. Recruiting

[COME ON!]

Originally Posted by dallasoliver

We get this question a lot. The answer has to do with the tournaments that are included in the rankings.

All ranking systems use a subset of the available tournaments:
- Points-based systems like those used by USTA national and the ITF specify which tournaments will count and what the point values will be.
- Head-to-head systems like the one used by TennisRecruiting.net specify which tournaments will count to guarantee enough cross-play between players for good rankings.

Even though you defeated some 1-Star opponents, you may not have played them in tournaments used in the TennisRecruiting.net.

I hope this answers your question in general. For questions about specific tournaments in your area, send us an email: info [at] TennisRecruiting.net.

Best,
Dallas

thanks buddy

that helps

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER

Can you see an overall (and admitted VERY general) number boy players have been historically to be picked up by a D1- D2-D3 school BEFORE the schools turn to foreign players?

Manfred -

As you point out in your post, this is a very difficult question to answer. Coaches recruit using a wide variety of criteria, schools and conferences have different academic standards, and (obviously) some programs have an easier time attracting talented players. For all of these reasons, there is no magic formula.

For men, there is also the question of level of scholarship funding. Since men's tennis is an equivalency sport, coaches have a lot of latitude in awarding funding - and the formula can change year by year.

I think the best way to go is to select schools of interest and look at the quality of their players. Let's look at a few D1 programs:

- Georgia (two-time defending NCAA champion)
- Washington (NCAA at-large team from the powerful Pac-10)
- Portland (non-NCAA team from WCC)
- Wisconsin-Green Bay (non-NCAA from Horizon League)

It is interesting to look at the rankings/ratings of the players on those teams.

Georgia: Over the past few years, Georgia's American players are all in the top 50 - and some of those players have not seen the court much during the dual season in the spring.

Washington: UW has several American players ranked in the top 250 or so.

Portland: The Pilots have a nice mix of Americans and international players. The majority of their players come from outside the Top 100.

Wisconsin-Green Bay: The Phoenix are mostly American - and their team has a mix of guys with impressive national rankings and some guys who did not have enough wins to be "1 Stars" at TennisRecruiting.net.

If you look around, there are a number of teams like Wisonsin-Green Bay. These are solid teams from mid-major conferences... conferences that usually get only a single bid to the NCAA tournament.


Also take a look at the overall commitment lists. For the Class of 2007, TennisRecruiting.net lists 36 1-Star players who who have committed to D1 schools. And we have more than 100 total 1-Star players on that list - and quite a few unrated Americans as well.

So again... if you are interested in a particular school, I recommend the following approach:

1) Match up the roster of the team with profiles from TennisRecruiting.net and USTA.com.
2) Take a look at the ratings/rankings of the players on the team.
3) Look at a few results from the season to determine what position the players are playing in the lineup. Are the 2-Star commits seeing time? During their freshman year?

Sorry that there is no silver bullet here. I hope this helps, and good luck!

Best,
Dallas

[dallasoliver]

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

Im still confused on this whole thing. ...

Hi iowabagelboy -

Let me try to address a few of these questions one at a time...

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

Im still confused on this whole thing. I cant figure out why someone is ranked ahead of me when they havent played since 8/2007.

Our system is like the majority of other junior ranking systems in that it uses the previous year of data. If someone elects to play tournaments only during the summer, then that is the player's record - and he will be ranked using that record. Our ranking system does have a factor to emphasize more recent tournaments, but all play from the past year counts.

Note that this player's ranking will decrease as his record shortens over the summer from tournaments falling off - and he will be unranked in 8/2008 unless he starts playing again.

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

Also If its a dual event where novice and open play in the tournament in seperate divisions open division players dont get scored by tennisrecruiting.com for our open matches.

For specific tournaments, you would have to email Julie Wrege at julie [at] tennisrecruiting.net. We explain which tournaments count here:

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/faq.asp#Rankings-J

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

I also dont understand the reasoning with the Prince Hot 100. I see many players with records 6-5 7-4 and other average records make the list but my 15-4 last month didnt

The Prince Hot 100 uses an objective measure of how much your ranking improves - not your record. A description of the formula is here:

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/about/Hot100.asp

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

Its seems to me if you arent playing national events then your website doesnt help me. Thats to bad because 90% of us cant play nationals.

There are a LARGE number of players who compete only in district-level events that are 1-Star or 2-Star players. I'm not sure what to say here. We do rank between 1,000 and 2,000 players for most classes, so obviously the vast bulk do not play nationals.

Our recruiting profiles, etc., do tend to feature national-calibre players - but the rankings include all players who play in the minimum number of tournaments and have the requisite number of wins.

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

Also I cant understand how a 1 star is ranked higher than a 2 star and 3 star.

Historically, we have computed the Top Prospect ratings once each year in the fall:

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/faq.asp#Ratings-B

Originally Posted by iowabagelboy

Same 1 star player had 3 wins over a 3 star that is playing up out of his division. Do you get bonus points for beating someone with you that has more stars even if they are 3 years younger than you?

There are no bonus points in our rankings. TennisRecruiting.net uses a head-to-head system that assigns each player an objective value - beating a player with a high value is worth more than beating someone with a lower value. Likewise, losing to a player with a value below your own value is bad. Take a look here for details:

http://www.tennisrecruiting.net/faq.asp#Rankings-H


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I hope this helps. Let me know if you have more questions.

Best,
Dallas

[MIGHTY MANFRED THE WONDER]

Thanks for continuing to reply to (sometimes) the same questions over and over.
As you suggest- Looking at the schools players are interested in, and THEN backing into numbers is really the only way to "match up".
Thanks again for taking the time to respond with the straight scoop.

You want it bad enough? like 10,000 guys and 150 spots-
I thought the numbers were "impossible" in football, for instance, and I watched 3 High School classmates make it all the way to the Pros on sheer "want".

[verdasco]

If someone is ranked 900 and he or she beats someone who is in top 250 (in the same class) How high would their ranking go up in the next week?

And just for kicks, what would happen if a 900 ranked player beat someone in the top 10.

Thanks Dallas

[BigBUBBA]

Originally Posted by dallasoliver

Good question - and one that we get asked a lot. We currently do not include doubles play in our rankings or feature them prominently at TennisRecruiting.net.

I personally love doubles, and Julie Wrege (one of our founders who spent many years running the Girl's 14 Nationals in Atlanta) has always pushed for doubles to have prominence.

Our position is NOT because we find doubles unimportant. On the contrary, we would love to feature doubles more prominently. We are not doing more with doubles because it is a very difficult problem to tackle with a head-to-head ranking system.

Let me take a break to provide some background. (Apologies to those of you who already know all of this.) There are two kinds of ranking systems: (1) points-based systems, where players are fundamentally awarded points based on how far the progress in tournaments, and (2) head-to-head systems where players are assigned rank values based on who they beat. The USTA and its sections use points-based systems for the most part, and TennisRecruiting.net uses a head-to-head system.

Handling doubles in a points system is straightforward - just assign points to both players based on the round that they reach. You can even have a combined ranking that is a combination of point values from both singles and doubles.

In a head-to-head system, ranking with doubles is not so obvious. We tried some naïve things - like crediting both winners and penalizing both losers - but the resulting rankings were horrible. Combining doubles with singles failed just as badly. A second problem we ran into was data quality. We spend an enormous amount of time and money getting accurate data for singles. While the data quality for singles is pretty good, we have found it difficult to get good data for doubles.

So, to answer your question, we have approached this problem a couple of times, but the task always seemed daunting with no good solution - and even if there was a good solution we are unsure if we would be able to handle the problems of getting the data.

In the end, we have always decided to tackle much smaller problems that we knew we could solve - like including player photos, ranking recruiting classes, etc. We are a small company with very limited resources - we can only tackle a small number of features each year, and we want those features to have a good bang for the buck.

None of this is not to say we are ignoring the problem. As time goes on and data quality improves, the task of incorporating doubles may become simpler.

I hope this helps.

Best,
Dallas

I am soooo glad that Tennis recruiting uses the head to head system. I suffer due to the points based system...I am 15 in my state but I have beaten almost everyone 14-7, and the 6 I've beaten 4 times!