Our Methodology

Data Sources

PrepRadar aggregates recruiting data from multiple authoritative services to build the most complete picture of every D1-caliber prospect. No single source tells the whole story, so we pull from all of them and reconcile discrepancies automatically.

• 247Sports — Our primary source for player profiles, composite rankings, and offer sheets. The most comprehensive dataset for prep basketball recruiting.
• ESPN — ESPN 60 rankings and top-prospect evaluations provide a second independent ranking signal, particularly valuable for elite prospects.
• On3 — On3 industry rankings and NIL valuations fill gaps where other services lack coverage, especially for rising prospects.
• Rivals — A long-standing recruiting service whose evaluations serve as a third-party cross-check on rankings and star ratings.
• Social Media (X / Instagram) — We monitor player, coach, and program accounts across X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram to surface commitment announcements, offer reveals, and transfer updates in real time.
• College Rosters — Official university roster pages are checked to verify enrollment status, ensuring that signed and enrolled players are accurately reflected in our database.

PrepRadar Composite Score

Rather than relying on any single ranking service, PrepRadar generates a unified composite score that weights and aggregates evaluations from all four major recruiting services—247Sports, ESPN, On3, and Rivals. This cross-referencing approach smooths out the biases inherent in any individual service and produces a more balanced assessment of each prospect.

The composite score accounts for ranking position, star rating, and service-specific rating scales. When a player appears on multiple services, their scores are normalized and combined. When a player is only tracked by one or two services, that context is factored into the confidence level of their composite rating.

You can explore composite scores across classes on our rankings page.

Verification Process

Data accuracy is the foundation of everything we do. Every piece of recruiting information goes through a multi-step verification pipeline before it reaches our users.

• Multi-source commitment confirmation — A commitment status is only updated after confirmation from at least two independent sources (e.g., 247Sports + Rivals, or a recruiting service + a verified news report). This prevents premature or erroneous commitment postings.
• Enrollment verification — For players who have signed or enrolled, we check official college roster pages to confirm they are actually on the team. This catches situations where a commitment falls through or a player transfers.
• Confidence scoring — Every data point carries a confidence score on a 0–1 scale based on source count, source authority, and recency. Higher confidence means more sources agree and the data is fresh.
• Automated conflict detection — Our systems automatically flag stale data, conflicting statuses (e.g., a player marked “uncommitted” but with a committed-to school), and other red flags for immediate editorial review.

Scout Reports

PrepRadar produces in-depth scout reports for tracked prospects using an AI-assisted, two-phase process designed to combine comprehensive data synthesis with editorial quality control.

1. Research Phase — The system gathers all available data for a prospect: rankings across services, statistical profiles, offer sheets, recruiting timeline, social media activity, and scouting notes. This raw research package forms the foundation of the report.
2. AI-Assisted Generation — Advanced language models synthesize the research into a structured report covering playing style, key strengths, areas for growth, and recruitment outlook. Reports typically run 800–1,200 words with detailed analysis.
3. Editorial Review — Generated reports are reviewed for accuracy, tone, and completeness. Our editorial team adds context from firsthand knowledge and ensures every report meets our quality bar before publication.

Scout reports are generated continuously and refreshed as new data becomes available. Browse player profiles on our players page to read them.

Content Quality Standards

Not every page on PrepRadar carries the same depth of information. To ensure that search engines and users only encounter substantial, valuable content, we employ an automated content scoring system.

• Page depth scoring — Each player, team, and aggregation page is scored based on the completeness of its data: rankings present, offers listed, scout report available, social links, photos, and more. The score reflects how much useful information the page actually contains.
• Thin page detection — Pages that fall below our quality threshold are automatically tagged with a noindex directive. This means they remain accessible to direct visitors but are excluded from search engine indexing until they accumulate enough data to be genuinely useful.
• Sitemap filtering — Our sitemap is dynamically generated to include only pages that meet the quality threshold, ensuring search engines focus their crawl budget on our strongest content.

This approach means the content you find through search is always backed by real, verified data—not placeholder pages.

Update Frequency

Recruiting moves fast, so our data pipelines run on aggressive schedules to keep everything current.

• Rankings — Scraped from all four major services on the 1st and 15th of each month, or more frequently during peak recruiting periods.
• Social monitoring — Player and program accounts on X and Instagram are checked four times daily for commitment announcements, offer reveals, and other recruiting updates.
• Offer tracking — Offer sheets are refreshed four times per week to capture new offers as they are reported.
• Scout reports — Generated and refreshed continuously as new data becomes available. Priority is given to prospects with recent recruiting activity.
• Blog content — Original editorial content is published daily on our blog, covering recruiting analysis, prospect spotlights, and conference breakdowns.
• Enrollment verification — College rosters are checked regularly to confirm that signed prospects have enrolled and to detect transfers.

Transparency

We believe in being open about how our data is collected and processed. If you have questions about our methodology or spot an inaccuracy, we want to hear from you. Reach out on X at @Prep_Radar or visit our about page to learn more about the team behind PrepRadar.