About Boys Hoop Scout and Girls Hoop Scout Ratings –
Girls Hoop Scout and Boys Hoop Scout operates under the premise that there is a level of college basketball for
virtually any young person who wants to pursue the sport on the collegiate level. We base this conclusion on the
many different levels of college basketball that exist. This list includes; NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic
Association) Div I-III, NAIA (National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics) Div I & II, NCCAA (National Christian
College Athletic Association) Division I and II, NJCAA( National Junior College Athletic Association) Div I,II & III , and
the NSCAA (National Small College Athletic Association). In addition you also have two other Canadian collegiate
athletic associations that often recruit and take American players.
We also take into account the geographic area of the country that the young athletes are from. For instance,
Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee are considered top 15 states for producing future female college basketball
players. Because of this readily available talent pool, the colleges in these regions tend to be stronger than many
other parts of the country. This means if a young lady is willing to travel away to go to school, she may well find that
she can play on a higher level outside of this region. The same holds true in the men’s game. An example of this
would be an athlete who might be recruited D3 here in North Carolina could well be a scholarship player in the
Midwest or Northeast. We try to get information on athletes in one part of the country to colleges in another part of
the country as well as their home area. Many Non-Division I colleges have a limited recruiting budget, therefore they
often do not travel outside their region to recruit . However if they are made aware of a good player in another part of
the country that is willing to relocate to play college basketball they may indeed become interested.
The goal of our organization is to help get young people on college radar screens. Colleges are not going to
offer or not offer an athlete a scholarship based on what any scouting service might say. Colleges check and double
check each athlete before offering them a uniform. Our ratings are merely one persons opinion. We still send all the
information to all the schools and those colleges will inevitably make their own evaluations as to whether the athlete
has the ability to play at their insitution. We also understand that in most cases the window of time we see an athlete
play is limited and we point this out to colleges when we send our ratings out. Do not worry if we rate a player higher
or lower than what you feel they should have been rated, the colleges will sort through that. We just try to give a
general idea of where we feel an athlete is compared to the thousands of other players their age we have seen at
that time in their development. We also error on the side of youth, the younger a player is the more lenient we are on
our rankings because the more time they have to develop as a player. Hoop Scout is here to help make dreams
come true and we hope in our small way we can yours come true as well.
The New Hoop Scout Rating Guide
We had started the rating process by using the traditional star system that many of the other recruiting services
use, however we decided that a 1-5 number system with .5’s made more sense. This means that if we rate a player a
1.5 for example then we feel at this point they are a non-scholarship level player but with continued improvement may
be able to step up to become a scholarship level player. The same goes for the scholarship level ratings. For
instance if we rate a player a 2.5, it means that at this point we consider them to be an NCAA Division II level player
but they have the opportunity with continued development and improvement to move up to a 3.0 player which is low
to mid major division I. We felt this gave a fairer and more accurate assessment of where a player is currently in the
scale.
Level 1 – Non Scholarship Player – NCCAA Div II/NCAA III/NJCAA III/NSCAA
Level 2 – NCAA Div II/NAIA Div I&II/NCCAA Div I/NJCAA Div I&II/Canadian Leagues
Level 3 – NCAA Division I Low to Mid major
Level 4 – NCAA Division I Mid to High Major
Level 5 – NCAA Division I High Major