bitcruncher
pepperoni roll psycho...
Posts: 61,859
Joined: Jan 2006
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I Root For: West Virginia
Location: Knoxville, TN |
RE: Big East football recruiting
Talk about recruits and stars all you want. WVU is going to have all their recruits qualify this year. No more partial qualifiers or head cases allowed... The Charleston Gazette Wrote:WVU's class has leg up in classroom
By Dave Hickman
Staff writer
February 3, 2009
MORGANTOWN - There are certain to be exceptions because there always are, but there's one thing Bill Stewart likes about the West Virginia recruiting class he's expected to sign on Wednesday.
It's not the athleticism, although there's plenty of that.
Nor is it that the Mountaineers seem to have done a pretty good job of filling many of their needs. And yes, there are plenty of needs and plenty of guys to fill them.
No, instead what Stewart likes the most is that come May, June and July he's not likely to be fretting over how many of his incoming recruits are actually going to make the grade.
Not figuratively, but literally.
"We're not talking about guys who have just qualified and won't have eligibility problems,'' Stewart said Monday. "We're talking about a class full of students. We've got honor students, 4.0 guys, great kids.''
Seldom in the recent past have West Virginia recruiting classes been as seemingly well-prepared for college, not from a football standpoint but from an academic point of view.
In taking some chances on some talented athletes, the Mountaineers always seemed to go after at least a few each year who may have been marginal students. In a way, there's nothing wrong with that. We're not talking about taking bad kids. That's another story and there have been a few of those, too. But if you sign a kid whose only issue is that he might not make it academically, well, if he does it's a bonus and perhaps even a home run. And if he doesn't make it, you're simply out a player.
And as long as we're being honest here, let's also admit that while West Virginia's stature has grown by leaps and bounds as far as being a player on the national scene is concerned, it's still not always easy to get the cream of the crop to visit, much less commit, to the school.
And in a way, that's still true. Sure, you can froth at the mouth over the talent Stewart and his staff have apparently assembled in this class, which if you believe the so-called experts, stands to be among the highest-rated groups in school history. But the bottom line is that according to the two primary Internet recruiting services - rivals.com and scout.com - only one of WVU's current commitments is of the five-star variety. Scout.com gives Baltimore running back Tavon Austin five stars, while rivals.com calls him a four-star.
The point is that West Virginia is still fighting an uphill battle for the best of the best and winning only a precious few. So in a way, not much has changed.
What has changed, however, is the Mountaineers' philosophy on what constitutes taking a chance on a kid. Now the only gambles are on talent, perhaps recruiting a kid who might not be on everyone else's radar because West Virginia sees potential. It seems the days of gambling on whether a kid will qualify academically are over.
That's not to say there won't be a few who fall through the cracks. These are still high school kids and you never know what's in their heads. Most still have at least three months of high school classes remaining and, contrary to what some will try to tell you, very few of the current recruits have technically qualified.
Wide receiver Logan Heastie obviously has, because he has already enrolled. Another wideout, Deon Long, has finished the requirements for his high school diploma, but just couldn't get it done in time to enroll last month. The rest, to varying degrees, still need to finish their work and with grade-point averages that match their ACT or SAT scores on a sliding scale.
The difference this year is that virtually everyone on West Virginia's board already has a test score that's more than adequate, provided their high school grades don't slip. One significant exception is the only junior-college signee in the group, defensive end Tevita Finau, who has left Phoenix Community College and returned to Hawaii where he is finishing his two-year degree through online courses.
In past recruiting classes, there were always a minimum of five or 10 players who were still trying to get a decent test score or trying to figure out how to boost their GPA to match whatever score they already had. And so the month of May was spent crossing fingers while waiting for grades and June and July was spent watching guys take the next available test.
That shouldn't be nearly the problem this spring that it has been recently, which is just as encouraging as those experts' ratings of the players themselves.
As for those players, well, if you've read even one word I've written on the subject of recruiting in the past you know I don't buy those ratings at all. If you have any common sense at all, neither will you. I mean, just look at the evidence, which is that West Virginia's best players are almost never their highest-rated recruits. And the highest-rated recruits are almost never the best players.
When are you ever going to learn that and stop getting so worked up?
Of course, maybe the emphasis on academics will change that. Smarter players tend to be better players. One reason so many of WVU's highest-rated recruits haven't panned out is because they haven't lasted. They've either not qualified or struggled academically or simply washed out, perhaps in part to those academic difficulties.
How knows? If these guys succeed where others have not, maybe there will be a case to be made that smarter players will actually make those recruiting experts look smarter, too.
Reach Dave Hickman at 304-348-1734 or dphickman1@aol.com.
(This post was last modified: 02-03-2009 01:30 PM by bitcruncher.)
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