NCAA Basketball: Ranking top conferences by 2019 recruiting classes
When it comes to the 2019 NCAA Basketball recruiting classes, which conferences collectively did the best? Here’s a ranking of the top leagues.
The 2019-20 NCAA Basketball season is just a couple of months away from starting up. And plenty of teams have high hopes and expectations that things will go their way starting in November. A lot of that has to do with some of the impressive recruiting classes solidified this offseason. Several teams, in fact, had surprisingly impressive hauls that hope to jumpstart their respective programs when it comes to on the court success.
When it comes to which conferences are most likely to get the most bids (or multiple bids total in the case of mid-majors), how well they did collectively in their recruiting classes can tell a story. Some may not work out but plenty of others do. So which conference did the best in regards to recruiting? Here’s how I would rank them all the way to No. 1 – starting with three honorable mentions.
*Rankings are based from 247sportsComposite
Mountain West
Impact recruits: Liam Mcchesney (Utah State), Niven Glover (Fresno State), Isaiah Stevens (Colorado State), Antwan January (New Mexico)
Led by the Nevada Wolf Pack under former head coach Eric Musselman, the Mountain West has been using the transfer portal more than the traditional high school route to get talent. And it looks like some of the newer head coaches are following that model going forward. Only three schools brought in more than two players from the 2019 class, with more than half having just one or even zero commits.
But there are still some newcomers outside the portal that should have some big seasons, primarily from Utah State. McChesney is a needed stretch forward who’ll lead the way after Player of the Year Sam Merrill is gone, while JUCO transfer Alphonso Anderson should be an instant impact player from the perimeter. The Aggies are considered the preseason favorite and their class solidifies that.
Conference USA
Impact recruits: Jordan Rawls (Western Kentucky), Jacob Germany (Texas-San Antonio),
Jahmir Young (Charlotte), Tyson Jackson (Middle Tennessee)
Another conference that likes to use transfers, teams such as UTEP and South Alabama have landed plenty of other players in the portal to inject a talent surge in their programs. As for the other teams, they went hard on the trail this past year. Eight teams have at least three commits and led by Charlotte, all eight are ranked in the top 100 teams overall. This mid-major league separated themselves compared to the others outside of the P-7.
Atlantic 10 Conference
Impact recruits: Tre Mitchell (UMass), Nah’shon Hyland (VCU), Maceo Austin (Duquesne), Yuri Collins (Saint Louis)
With only five teams having more than two commits in their respective classes, this is more about “quality” rather than “quantity”. VCU got a late commitment from point guard Hyland who’ll take over after this group of seniors depart. And Mitchell is a top-100 big man tasked with accelerating the rebuild of the Minutemen. His play in the preseason foreign tour has been exciting, to say the least. A few others such as Austin and Collins spurned power conference offers to play in the A-10 and has All-Conference potential.