Mavric
Yoda
Yes and no.
I don't blame anyone for thinking it is underwhelming. We don't often get a lot of four-stars but there seems to be a particular lack this year. At least so far.
Part of the issue is we've been close but came up short. Last week Rivals released their new rankings and there were eight new four-stars. We were in the final group for three of them. So to some extent we were in on some guys who were under-ranked. But we didn't land them either so that doesn't help.
I do think part of the issue is the rankings are just a little behind right now. In general it seems to me that the ranking services have made an effort to be more conservative with their initial rankings and then move guys up rather than have to move them down. And with all the craziness of the last year, they just haven't been able to do full evaluations on a lot of guys.
According to 247, there were 32 five-stars last year. Right now there are only 5. Also on 247 there were 212 guys rated at least 92 last year; this year there are only 176 so far. So I think it's entirely possible if not likely that there will be upgrades on a lot of players in the next seven months. How many of our guys go up and how far will be interesting to see.
But I think it's pretty likely that we are feeling the results of four straight losing seasons. I've long maintained that success on the field comes before recruiting success, not the other way around. The first year or two you can sell change, especially coming off the great 2017 season the coaches had. But that's all gone at this point and it's tough to compete with the big boys in recruiting with the record we've had. We need to get back into that 7-8 win range to start swinging things back the other way.
But the other unknown is are the coaches making a conscious effort to try to find guys who they really think will stay. We've taken some guys who just haven't fit for one reason or anther and that's left holes in the roster. I've wondered if we've changed a little bit of who we're looking for - at least in the short term - to try to build a little different way.
And finally, we're just in a really bad spot with not being able to have guys visit for over a year. We depend on getting guys here so they can really see what it's like to change their perception. We've been totally unable to do that for a long time. That hurts us more than most.
We've had a couple four-stars pop up recently that we didn't know were that interested in us. I'm not overly concerned just yet because of everything I just listed. We have time to get guys here this fall for the full game experience which is always our best selling point.
But that doesn't mean there isn't any reason for concern.
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