Buckeyedynasty;754642; said:
Super Mario- Thanks for the info. about Michigan talent and prospects. Didn't mean to offend you about my comments about Lloyd striking out on top talent. I just meant that as good as the instate talent was last year its got to be hard for the coaching staff to not land many of those great prospects. Thanks again and as always .
No problem, and no offense taken really.
2007 was definetly the exception to the rule. Usually when there are top-notch national level talents in-state Michigan locks them up. Once in awhile one or two that Michigan kind of slow played will get away, but usually when they press for an in-state kid they get that kid. 2007 really was an exception, just a wierd year. For one I've never seen that many quality kids in-state and two I've never seen Michigan lose so many of them. A few of them can be explained (Threet, Dell, Washington, Nichol, Colosanti, Sawtelle) while a few of them were just puzzling (Johnson, Barksdale, Allen).
I'll try to explain as quick as possible.
Threet, Dell, Nichol: never had offers.
Colosanti and Sawtelle: From Brother Rice, a school that has not been kind to Michigan over the years. Very Pro-MSU Head Coach. Colosanti just never seemed that interested. Sawtelle was very interested, we were very close in that race, kid just grew up a die-hard Vol fan. His grandfather was a legendary lineman at UT, decided to follow in grandpas footsteps and from what I understand he actually has more extended family in Tennessee than he does in Michigan.
Washington: didn't have a particularly great day at Michigan's camp, already had Webb, Rogers, and at the time Maze as potential WR's, when they got word that Toney Clemons and JR Hemingway were likely coming on-board as well they cooled off on Washington a little bit and put him on the back-burner IMO.
Barksdale, Allen, Johnson: each one of these kids silently committed to Michigan before.
Barksdale committed to quite a few different schools though. In fact, one guy who is pretty well connected to the Michigan program and former players (including guys like Wilcher) who sends out small e-mails actually said to expect Barksdale to go as far away from home as possible and that Wilcher advised Michigan against recruiting Barksdale. The man who sends out these e-mails very rarely if ever talks about recruiting, but he was all over the Barksdale recruitment from the beginning. He was saying USC or Texas, and that Barksdale's father wanted him as far away from home as possible. I never expected Barksdale to wind up at Michigan solely because the guy who sends out the e-mails was pretty admant about it, and when he speaks on a topic as sternly as he did Barksdale he knows what's up.
Now, the other two kids were somewhat shocking surprises.
Johnson, that was just a mess, don't feel like getting into that.
Allen was probably the most shocking at the time. Allen reassured the coaching staff he was coming, was hamming it up in all the articles about his love for Michigan, and he was openly recruiting other players to come join him at Michigan, even Ronald Johnson, and even his buddies who play basketball, Alex Legion and Kalin Lucas.