2010 tOSU Recruiting Discussion

[osubartender23]

Is 20 the number of scholarships he had this year or was he planning on banking some for next year?

From what I heard on the radio is that Tressel stated that they had wanted 20, and they would be very happy with 19, and they thought that the class of 18 was very solid.

 

[cincibuck]

What exciting news? Haven't had my coffee yet.

Corey Brown and James Lewis, looks like the bucks picked up two potential step-in-and-play-now WRs.

 

[sepia5]

Read this in an internal email:

<quote>
Here?s some examples from the Rivals top 10 using the number of offers that Rivals claims a school has given:

#1 Florida: 135 offers for 28 commits (4.8 offers per commit)
#2 USC: 74 offers for 19 commits (3.9)
#3 Texas: 33 offers for 25 commits (1.3)
#4 Auburn: 129 offers for 32 commits (4.0)
#5 Alabama: 119 offers for 26 commits (4.6)
#6 LSU: 94 offers for 29 commits (3.2)
#7 Oklahoma: 119 offers for 29 commits (4.1)
#8 UCLA: 124 offers for 24 commits (5.2)
#9 Tennessee: 242 offers for 25 commits (9.7)
#10 Florida State: 172 offers for 24 commits (7.2)
</quote>

Any idea what tOSU's ratio looks like? I am guessing something like 4...

Ant's list has 66 offers on it, with 17 commits (I'm not counting Hyde). That would work out to 3.9. The number of commits compared to the rest of that list tells me that the staff may have been too selective with offers this season, when one considers we only got 18 and wanted 20. I'm not advocating offering at a rate like Tennessee or even UCLA, but there have to have been a few other kids on the staff's board that they would have been happy with. It's one thing to offer low numbers when you're chugging along at about a commit for every second or third offer like we probably were the past two classes, but I would have liked to have seen more offers go out this year. I think another 10-15 offers could have yielded a class of 20 depending on the timing of the offers and how heavily the additional targets were recruited elsewhere.

 

[Oh8ch]

I can't wait for the NCAA to issue its findings on USC so I will know whether or not JT can close.

 

[sepia5]

Corey Brown and James Lewis, looks like the bucks picked up two potential step-in-and-play-now WRs.

Louis.

 

[cincibuck]

One things for sure, given the team's needs this recruiting class looks better than the Browns and Bengals draft picks for most of the last decade.

 

[mross34]

--Official visits during the season. I've been following recruiting for over 20 years now, and regardless of whether it was Cooper or Tressel in charge, I can't remember a big recruiting weekend like this past year vs. USC resulting in many commitments. I understand why in-season visits need to happen occasionally (i.e., a kid plans of committing during the season), but it's hard to keep momentum with kids when they plan on taking other visits later and decide months in the future. I'm not singling out the group that attended the USC game on official visits, because I know there are extenuating circumstances, but in general, I've not seen these weekends work well at OSU. Would it work better to try and get more kids in on visits in December? Yeah, the weather is lousy, but might it yield better results?

This is a really good point. Combining this with your point about taking the Texas approach, and the point that there's simply not as much total talent in Ohio as Texas, I'd like to see them take somewhat of a hybrid approach. Get the top players in Ohio and OOS heavy OSU leans up for big games (maybe a portion on officials, some on unofficials) and camps as many times as you possibly can early. Hope for early commits. Hope they spread the good OSU word to other OSU targets. Then bring in commits late (the ones who didn't already take their official) in the year with some top targets. Maybe it's close to what they do now, but I'm no insider so I don't really know.

Just out of curiosity are there any recruiting violations in telling kids that seem to have that Brewster gene who we're targeting and maybe even suggesting they take somewhat of a leadership role for that class?

 

[Hodgepodge]

One things for sure, given the team's needs this recruiting class looks better than the Browns and Bengals draft picks for most of the last decade.

I believe that falls under the category of "darning with faint praise".

 

[Buckeyefrankmp]

From what I heard on the radio is that Tressel stated that they had wanted 20, and they would be very happy with 19, and they thought that the class of 18 was very solid.

I saw that. I answered my own question. There are 19 seniors leaving plus Gibson leaving early would give us the 20 number. The next question would be if they have two scholarships available are they going to save them for next years class or find some unsigned high school player?

 

[sepia5]

I saw that. I answered my own question. There are 19 seniors leaving plus Gibson leaving early would give us the 20 number. The next question would be if they have two scholarships available are they going to save them for next years class or find some unsigned high school player?

I imagine they'll give them to walk-ons for one year so that they'll still be available for next year's class, which should (needs to) be a good one.

 

[Hodgepodge]

I saw that. I answered my own question. There are 19 seniors leaving plus Gibson leaving early would give us the 20 number. The next question would be if they have two scholarships available are they going to save them for next years class or find some unsigned high school player?

Unless they do a 180 on Anderson or the unthinkable happens and USC gets a deserving punishment (potentially putting Henderson back into play), I'm sure the staff will issue those scholarships to senior-to-be walkons and have two more scholarships available for the 2011 class.

 

[matcar]

The thing is I disagree with this. JT himself said yesterday that they wanted to take 20 kids and they would have been very happy with 19, but that they have a solid group of 18 kids coming in. I dont think missing out on recruits late is "part of the process". I think that it is what happens when the staff believes they are going to come out on top with certain recruits to be informed differently at the last minute. I think the program is successful in spite of this.



So if these kids arent typically a good fit, then why does the staff continue to recruit them? They obviously think that these kids would be a great fit for the team or they wouldnt have offered them in the first place.



So you really think that Tressel has an "overall design" and missing out on recruits late in the game is part of it? Really? If this is who he is then wouldnt he stop recruiting these recruits and settle for who he already has committed? I dont think there is a doubt in anyones mind that the staff wanted to take a full class of 20 yesterday. It didnt happen though so they settled for the solid class that they have in the fold. Nothing wrong at all with the class that we have landed, it just wouldnt have been a bad thing to be able to close out on some of this top national talent that we consistently lose out on late in the game.

No, I think his overall design is how he approaches every kid. And this approach naturally fits kids that tend to commit earlier and doesn't tend to fit those that commit late. Subtle difference, but nonetheless clear. No, no one would have been unhappy if a late commit came our way, but it ISN'T surprising because of the way that JT approaches the whole process. It's the way it is and will always be with him, and the PROCESS continues to work incredibly well on the whole.

 

[RB07OSU]

I would not be surprised to see OSU's 2011 class have a "Texas feel" to it...

I was just thinking this...huge amount of in state talent = lock it up early. Target a few OOS guys we have a shot at and push for early commits like in '09. I loved the strategy in '09 personally.

You could list 18 good ones that any program misses out on every year; there's hundreds of future stars out there and nobody gets everyone they offer. For the most part we knew who we weren't getting awhile ago: Floyd and Henderson and Moses are really the only ones we missed out here at the end, and yes we'd love to have any of them, but as has been said if we didn't know they were that close we'd never miss them anyway. Calling this a down year is just an opinion, one that we don't all share.

I don't think every school on our tier who we should be recruiting with (USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, Penn State, etc.) missed that many guys whom they had spent significant recruiting effort on and/or saved spots for. Maybe they miss on some token offers they don't pursue, but I doubt they miss that many guys they focus in on like we did. We also missed plenty of token offers on top of that list.

I don't really think calling it a down year is an opinion...we finished 20th nationally on Scout and 26th on Rivals. We completely struck out on nearly the second half of the class we wanted to round out (Joyner, Shaw, Henderson, Floyd, James, Moses, Brown, etc.). People point to numbers being why other programs are ahead of us, yet the top 14 on Rivals all have high star averages. I said early on that this might not be a top 25 class and everyone scoffed, yet it happened. Beyond the "trivial" star ratings, if you just compare this class to what we generally get in terms of amount of commitments per offer and filling up your target number, it is a down year. I can't remember ever missing so many guys we've focused in on, not even in '07 and I've followed recruiting since '03. It would be an opinion if all the numbers didn't back it up. We haven't had a class this down since '03 and it's debatable which was worse (before attrition). The silver lining is that a down year at OSU still produces a good class.

Ant's list has 66 offers on it, with 17 commits (I'm not counting Hyde). That would work out to 3.9. The number of commits compared to the rest of that list tells me that the staff may have been too selective with offers this season, when one considers we only got 18 and wanted 20. I'm not advocating offering at a rate like Tennessee or even UCLA, but there have to have been a few other kids on the staff's board that they would have been happy with. It's one thing to offer low numbers when you're chugging along at about a commit for every second or third offer like we probably were the past two classes, but I would have liked to have seen more offers go out this year. I think another 10-15 offers could have yielded a class of 20 depending on the timing of the offers and how heavily the additional targets were recruited elsewhere.

I don't think so honestly. It seemed to me we possibly put out more offers than normal, we just didn't produce the commitments. Then the guys we put most of our effort into recruiting went elsewhere.

 

[ncaahoopfan]

No, I think his overall design is how he approaches every kid. And this approach naturally fits kids that tend to commit earlier and doesn't tend to fit those that commit late. Subtle difference, but nonetheless clear. No, no one would have been unhappy if a late commit came our way, but it ISN'T surprising because of the way that JT approaches the whole process. It's the way it is and will always be with him, and the PROCESS continues to work incredibly well on the whole.

I look at the Brew Crew was the benchmark for how the 'Tressell Recruiting System' is supposed to work.

1> Recruit high quality individuals (both on the field and off)
2> Get a couple commits early from guys who like to travel the camp/all-star game circuit (Brewster/Posey/Stoney)
3> Let those guys (and their families) help the sell the other interested prospects.

I think that without all the future Buckeyes at the All-Star game working on Pryor, some other team would have swooped in the last minute.

 

[Oh8ch]

The day OSU needs to recruit high school kids to sell its reputation is the day we might as well go join the MAC.