I am planning on doing a weekly series starting the week of the GT game where I compare the depth charts of Louisville vs our opponent to see where we stack up from a strictly recruited talent perspective. I am a huge numbers/data nerd as well as recruiting nerd, and I believe that recruiting ratings are a pretty good indicator of overall talent. Yes there will be guys who are highly rated that don’t pan out, and of course there will be some 2* that become all-conference level players (Jamari Thrash). But the data does show that the rankings are pretty good in general, and I believe they are a good indicator of a team’s win ceiling. Doesn’t mean we can’t beat teams who are more talented than us on any given day, but the amount of studs you have does seem to correlate with a team’s season win ceiling. For instance no team has ever won a National Title (since recruiting ratings were invented) without having at least half their roster composed of 4/5* players. However, I do think it’s worth mentioning that I believe Brohm is a top 10 coach and that gives us a chance every week. But here is the number of total blue chips we’ve had each year on the roster since 2015 and our regular season win totals:
As you can see we have MUCH more talent on paper than we’ve had in quite some time and maybe ever. I would like to think that pushes our ceiling up a win or 2 this year.
Anyways, for the purpose of this season I have compiled all of the composite ratings for every player both on Louisville’s 2023 roster and each of the teams we play this year. I did include transfers, but I only included their rating coming out of high school. I don’t think the transfer rating system is quite worked out yet so I didn’t want to use that. Unlike TOS’s blue chip ratio this does not include players who signed and transferred later as I think that’s stupid. Below is the blue chip ratio using the above parameters for all the teams on our schedule:
This is not meant to predict W/L but just shows the overall level of high end talent with regard to recruiting ratings. The only surprise here to me is GT. For all the talk about how much they suck they actually do have some highly rated guys specifically at the skill positions, mostly via transfer portal. And wow Duke has a serious lack of star power for a team that won 8 games last year, I expect a major regression for them.
Again, I will be doing a weekly series once depth charts come out for the week of each game to dive further into the talent comparison (not just blue chip comparison) by position and hopefully that generates some discussion about matchups. I know nobody asked for this, but I figured at least one other person would like to see the data that I’m compiling and find it informative. Hope y’all enjoy!
Year | Total Blue Chips | W/L |
2023 | 22 | ? |
2022 | 7 | 7-5 |
2021 | 4 | 6-6 |
2020 | 8 | 4-7 |
2019 | 12 | 7-5 |
2018 | 11 | 2-10 |
2017 | 9 | 8-4 |
2016 | 11 | 9-3 |
2015 | 10 | 7-5 |
As you can see we have MUCH more talent on paper than we’ve had in quite some time and maybe ever. I would like to think that pushes our ceiling up a win or 2 this year.
Anyways, for the purpose of this season I have compiled all of the composite ratings for every player both on Louisville’s 2023 roster and each of the teams we play this year. I did include transfers, but I only included their rating coming out of high school. I don’t think the transfer rating system is quite worked out yet so I didn’t want to use that. Unlike TOS’s blue chip ratio this does not include players who signed and transferred later as I think that’s stupid. Below is the blue chip ratio using the above parameters for all the teams on our schedule:
Team | Total Blue Chips | BCR |
Notre Dame | 57 | 67% |
Miami | 45 | 53% |
Kentucky | 29 | 34% |
Louisville | 22 | 26% |
NC State | 20 | 24% |
Georgia Tech | 18 | 21% |
Pittsburgh | 13 | 15% |
Indiana | 10 | 12% |
Boston College | 9 | 11% |
Virginia Tech | 7 | 8% |
Virginia | 6 | 7% |
Duke | 2 | 2% |
This is not meant to predict W/L but just shows the overall level of high end talent with regard to recruiting ratings. The only surprise here to me is GT. For all the talk about how much they suck they actually do have some highly rated guys specifically at the skill positions, mostly via transfer portal. And wow Duke has a serious lack of star power for a team that won 8 games last year, I expect a major regression for them.
Again, I will be doing a weekly series once depth charts come out for the week of each game to dive further into the talent comparison (not just blue chip comparison) by position and hopefully that generates some discussion about matchups. I know nobody asked for this, but I figured at least one other person would like to see the data that I’m compiling and find it informative. Hope y’all enjoy!
