About all the things wrong with ranking prospects nationwide, but I'll try to be as brief as possible 1) MOST IMPORTANT TO REMEMBER Rankings are made not by one person, but by hundreds of individuals. This means you bring in the biases and attractions of each of those individuals. Some people love bigs, some love pass-first point guards...how do you reconcile what Scout A likes vs what Scout B likes. They could see the same player and disagree with each others assessment. So the key might be then to trust one individual to rank everyone right? Wrong. Asking one player to watch 1,500+ individuals would require 24 hour watching of both game film and in-person scouting. There are only certain times of the year prospects even play so it is physically impossible to see everyone. They have to take the word of other scouts...other scouts who are biased just like you and I. 2) Also very important to remember Scouts do not care about fit within a program. A team could sign 13 five-star centers and have the #1 ranked recruiting class of all time. You can only play 9 or so players in a given year, and none of them are players who can swing to other positions so you've essentially turned 9 of you're 13 into useless 1-stars. Were they overrated then? Did the staff Scout wrong? Conversely, Hunter Cattoor. Hunter Cattoor wasn't top 500 in his class out of high school. He was seen as a skilled shooter, but average skills elsewhere. No real weaknesses, but outside of shooting nothing stood out. He commits to a system that emphasizes shooting, doesn't rely on driving the ball and uses a defense that relies on secondary defenders to discourage drives rather than leaving him in space. That highly increases his ability to become a good player at the next level. But had he committed to Memphis, he likely would not have seen the floor except in situations. He is a much better player than many that Memphis has, but within that system his weaknesses would be highlighted and his strengths minimized. This is where you need people like Rev. Zeke Vodka who has a scouting service that matches recruits with specific schools. He isn't in the business of ranking prospects, he simply knows how a school plays, looks for fits within that and then identifies those players for the staff. I hope I'm not blowing up his spot here, but what he has done is MUCH more valuable to any program than anything 247, ESPN or any other service could ever provide 3) what you're really asking for National scouts look for projection. First, do they have the measurables to project a high ceiling? This is why you see a lot of kids who are 6'7 PFs or Centers being listed as SG or SF on those sites. The kids know their ranking is limited if they say they're a smaller post rather than having much more projection as a wing, even though their skills suggest they're not going to get to that level. The others who are listed wrongly are simply done so because lots of scouts don't know how to ascertain versatility in their rankings. For once, I'd love to see a scouting service who says "Player X has a high ceiling as a 4, so we would rate him as a 94 there, but if a team were to move him to the wing he would be an 86." They want to pigeonhole kids, sometimes as to not upset AAU coaches, sometimes out of ignorance. But the bottom line is they're incorrect Next they look for athleticism. This speaks to point #2 above in that if you play in a system that builds in spacing, athleticism becomes less important. So how do you rate those kids? VT is always going to be able to find kids in the 200-300 range who are much better fits for their program than most in the Top 100. Top 100 kids are big, athletic drivers who can do flashy things with the ball in their hands. VT needs skilled, high IQ, spacers who can do their job within the framework of the offense. Those players are rated much lower. I loved Joe Bamisile, still do. But he would have been better served in a different system for 2 out of his 3 college years. I think VCU is a good spot for him and look for him to have a breakout year. He was a Top 100 player and a "big recruiting win" but MJ Collins is immeasurably better for VT and he was ranked much lower. Sorry, that wasn't brief. But there's a lot more to say even as I made some generalizations to keep this from becoming a novel