(02-16-2018 04:17 PM)monarx Wrote: (02-16-2018 03:33 PM)Gilesfan Wrote: (02-16-2018 03:27 PM)ODU804 Wrote: I hope to be proven wrong but it just feels like we are falling farther and farther behind in our football program. As has been stated many times, it just feels like we have lost all of the momentum that we had from moving up to FBS which has been reflected in our ability to recruit at a high level. I fully expect to hear that we weren't able to get our plans finalized in time to get approval from this year's General Assembly so we will have to push things back another year. Again, hope to be proven wrong on that as well.
Last year wasn't what we wanted because of the QB position, but why would we care more about recruiting rankings than actual results on the field?
Care about both, but recruiting is important \because recruiting is your future, results on the field are now. Its not hard to see whats coming down the pike if you follow recruiting. Take Blaine's basketball team for instance. Once Frank, Darius etc graduated you knew the team would take a step back because there were few quality freshman and sophomores in the pipeline to take their place. Same happened at the end of Capel's tenure. When your future is the likes of Freddie Bryant and Joe Principe things don't look good and you could see it coming. No disrespect to those guys. They took a scholly offered and did their best. So back to football, we had 1 very good recruiting class 4 years ago. Some of those guys just graduated and many of them graduate next season. At that point, unless we got some real diamonds in the rough, nice surprises as walk-ons or get some transfers, we will see a serious drop in talent everywhere except QB. We have some good guys coming in, we just need a whole class of them, not 4 or 5 surrounded by a bunch of FCS caliber guys and walk-ons. To do better we need facilities comparable to our conference mates. Why did we skyrocket through FCS? Our facilities were better than most and our crowd support better than most. We cant say that in CUSA much less the whole G5.
I see your point, but recruiting rankings honestly mean nothing at the level we are. They aren't kids that are scouted by recruiting rankings. They would mean something if they ever actually translated to performance on the field.
Our recruiting now is bettter than any recruiting cycles we had prior to 2014 so that really don't make a ton of sense.
OUr 2014 recruiting class is ranked as the best that we've had. Let's look and see why it was ranked as highly as it was and the results:
Yorke- Never played
Lawry- Star
Noye- Backup
Boothe- Backup
Appouph-Backup (fringe starter)
Bentley-Gone
Martinez- Backup
Lowe- Gone
Byrum- Backup
Little-Backup
Ximines- Star
Reynolds- Gone
Worthy-Gone
Tyson-Backup/Gone
Swann-Backup
THats the top 15 recruits, which are the reason the class was rated so highly (as well as sheer number of recruits). Other guys in the class:
Davila
Harper
Toal
Duhart
Clarke
Garcia
Branch
Fulgham
Cool, that we had a highly ranked class, just the reason we had a high class never materialized on the field (outside of 2 players out of the top 15). Does that tell you we just developed guys better? That the lower ranked guys were better? Recruiting rankings at this level just suck?
Why is it that our recruiting rankings have had no predictive power on how our recruits will end up? Why do we have so many 0-2 star players that become all conference players and so few 3 star guys that become all conference? This isn't some situation where "oh, a few lower ranked kids came out as surprises," we consistently have multiple low rank kids blossom.
Miskel
Ward
Sosebee
Williams
Hannan
Cox
Headen
Weaver
Storment
Blue
Young
Lawson
Cate
Meiser
Williams
All recruits lower than .80 (247 sports) that instantly became starters or fringe starters (in the last 3 recruiting cycles). There could possibly be 3-4 all conference players in that group (maybe more?) as well as a very good candidate for the first ODU player drafted (Ward).