couple chat notes

[Dann]

-we are out of it for fortt but hes def looking elsewhere, several newspapers reported it today also
-we are still in it for redd, yes u read that correct. he cannot go to usc and is looking elsewhere, uconn is still in contact.
-noel will be doing a story/shoot w/e u call it with msg magizine in august. so look our for that.
-man oh man getting kyle was a great commit. we did a good job what a week or 2 ago hitting him up on twitter. glad to see several of us on that game, at worst it didn't hurt to show him our fanbase cares...
-we are close to landing a nyc kid from what i'm sniffing around. will talk more about this soon after i get some answers.
-shorts to wvu is not surprising but smallwood not is. that means wvu is in fact full at rb with 2 or that a 3rd is a certain someone. this means we should be in it for smallwood and marcellus. hope we land 1 of those 2 or dez...

your thoughts?

 

[Rumrunner]

Redd would be...a monstrously big story, but I thought USC had room due to an academic casualty?

Who's the NYC recruit? LS?

 

[jrazz12]

-we are out of it for fortt but hes def looking elsewhere, several newspapers reported it today also
-we are still in it for redd, yes u read that correct. he cannot go to usc and is looking elsewhere, uconn is still in contact.
-noel will be doing a story/shoot w/e u call it with msg magizine in august. so look our for that.
-man oh man getting kyle was a great commit. we did a good job what a week or 2 ago hitting him up on twitter. glad to see several of us on that game, at worst it didn't hurt to show him our fanbase cares...
-we are close to landing a nyc kid from what i'm sniffing around. will talk more about this soon after i get some answers.
-shorts to wvu is not surprising but smallwood not is. that means wvu is in fact full at rb with 2 or that a 3rd is a certain someone. this means we should be in it for smallwood and marcellus. hope we land 1 of those 2 or dez...

your thoughts?

Dan, where's that Redd stuff coming from? Also, wonder if Khairi would rethink if Redd comes our way

 

[superjohn]

Yeah where are you hearing that about Redd? Give us some more info if you've got it.

 

[Rumrunner]

Penn State's preseason practices start August 6th. Once an athlete participates in those practices, he becomes ineligible under the NCAA's Penn State xfer rule. So Aug 6th, a lot of intentions will become manifest.

 

[huskyblooz]

I'm not getting my hopes up for any PSU guy. Just give me McNeal.
The admin is getting stricter on admissions for athletes because of the mens hoop team.

 

[ktuck911]

Good stuff HfD... you da man.. You mentioned we're in on an NYC kid? I'm sure you can't give names, but what I'm interested in is position... Can you give us that much?

to huskyblooz : looks we'll all feel the blues on that one as has been reported that McNeal won't be coming to UCONN ( friggin grad program issue )...smh

 

[uconndennis]

Twitter is saying that Redd has deleted his twitter account (whatever thats worth)...and his announcement will come later today.

 

[businesslawyer]

another thing i wanted to talk about was our 2 dbs so far. hadley is a good piece to the puzzle. very happy about him.

lucas and summers are no offer guys who i assume had great camps? if thats the case then good for them and i welcome them and will root for them etc. but should the staff really be burning 22 spots this early in the year recruit class wise on 2 kids with no other offers? shouldn't we be ready to offer and keep them very high on the radar but go after some others first? i have been a big fan of what PP and crew have been doing so far on the trail as you guys know, but considering the progress with a good % of our kids this year having other offers, this seems a little desperate at this position. maybe they felt these kids wouldn't be out there long with out offers and they gave them timed offers?

If coaches have a kid into camp and then offer them, why wouldn't you assume that, having seen the players with their own eyes, they don't think there is anyone out there who they have a reasonable shot of getting who they think will be better players? Ultimately, you have to hope that the coaches trust their own evaluation skills more than trying to piece together how other schools are evaluating the same players.

 

[pj]

If coaches have a kid into camp and then offer them, why wouldn't you assume that, having seen the players with their own eyes, they don't think there is anyone out there who they have a reasonable shot of getting who they think will be better players? Ultimately, you have to hope that the coaches trust their own evaluation skills more than trying to piece together how other schools are evaluating the same players.

We know that what you say is true ... The question is whether we should feel disappointed that we don't have a reasonable shot of getting players that will be better. What puzzles me is it seems like we got a late start recruiting cornerbacks, even though we have 2 graduating and a need at the position. We didn't give out many offers, and not much activity was reported -- not much player interest. Were we intentionally waiting for camps to evaluate cornerbacks? I don't know. Javon Hadley is a terrific player. Maybe these other two are also great talents that other schools have missed out on. I hope so.

Dan, do we know that Travon Reid or Darren Parker are better players than Summers or Lucas? It's not obvious that the staff is convinced of that, or even the recruiting services for that matter.

 

[businesslawyer]

We know that what you say is true ... The question is whether we should feel disappointed that we don't have a reasonable shot of getting players that will be better. What puzzles me is it seems like we got a late start recruiting cornerbacks, even though we have 2 graduating and a need at the position. We didn't give out many offers, and not much activity was reported -- not much player interest. Were we intentionally waiting for camps to evaluate cornerbacks? I don't know. Javon Hadley is a terrific player. Maybe these other two are also great talents that other schools have missed out on. I hope so.

Dan, do we know that Travon Reid or Darren Parker are better players than Summers or Lucas? It's not obvious that the staff is convinced of that, or even the recruiting services for that matter.

I am not telling you not to be disappointed that we don't think we have a reasonable chance of getting more highly sought after players. Of course you can be disappointed about that. I am as well.

But Dan's question was why aren't we delaying offering the "under the radars" and I was merely pointing out that the answer ought to be self-apparent -- that the coaches didn't think there were other players we could get who were better.

 

[junglehusky]

I'm with BL on this one. If the staff sees a kid in camp, and thinks they will do well as a future Husky player, why wait? Because some other recruits have more offers? If that were the case then the UConn staff's priorities list of which recruits they want most is based on what coaches at other schools are doing. I say you go with your own evaluation and whatever happens with other schools is incidental. I understand you don't want an entire roster full of under-the-radar Edsall type recruits, but we're not going to recruit a roster full of bonafide four stars either.

 

[junglehusky]

Another thought - I don't want to put words in dan's mouth here so forgive me if that's what I'm doing. What if you have a kid in your pocket, you think he's good but you want more media attention on signing day, so you tell him to shop around a bit more to get his visibility up. He goes to different camps, gets seen by the recruiting services, maybe gets some other offers, and then bumps up a star or two. You do this with a few kids per class and maybe it builds some more buzz around the program. I don't know if this is what dan was suggesting, and I don't know how often it happens in DI football recruititng but it wouldn't surprise me if coaches do it. The problem I would have is that the kid might wind up liking some of the other offers better! And if you want to build buzz it's probably better to focus on winning more games, but that's a cliche right?

 

[Rumrunner]

HFDan, I see your point. For better or worse the rankings serve two things:

A general consensus of how good a recruit is, especially if rated across the services and matched up with a recruit's offer list. Sometimes an offer list dictates the ranking, or vice versa, but it gets one to the starting point of recruit evaluation from a fan's perspective.

The second is the impact of rankings on future recruits. Great players want to play with other great players, good players with other good players, and of course neither great nor good players want to play with mediocre players.

Here, Pasqualoni offered a couple of players that aren't in the system, nor hold offers from FBS programs. Since we don't know the status of the other recruits who were offered at the same position (no interest, low interest, etc.) I can't say that Pasqualoni is screwing up with these type of offers. Maybe these are the best that he can do. That's seems doubtful given the number of recruits still left and the 6 months left to go in the recruiting period.

On the second point, the perception of having kids fill out the roster who hold no other offers, nor are good enough to be rated by Rivals, ESPN, 247- this is a negative. This is how the FBS football world works, for better or worse. It's like the APR- it doesn't really measure academic success on any level- but it's a system that needs to be gamed because that's the only way to achieve success. Same thing with these rankings. The camps, services, self-prepared films, etc. are all part of the game. It's a lot easier for a 4* to commit when he sees the recruit list filled with other 4*s.

So taking a guy who isn't the best available (presumably) combined with the hit on ranking perception isn't something others would have done. Of course Pasqualoni is paid $2m a year to make these decisions. Maybe on these recruits he didn't care what was said on paper, or on film, but what he saw with his own eyes. Let's see if these two kids enroll and then we can use them as our N=2 sample size. Hopefully Pasqualoni proves to have earned every penny of his salary.

 

[Jimmy Serrano]

Another thought - I don't want to put words in dan's mouth here so forgive me if that's what I'm doing. What if you have a kid in your pocket, you think he's good but you want more media attention on signing day, so you tell him to shop around a bit more to get his visibility up. He goes to different camps, gets seen by the recruiting services, maybe gets some other offers, and then bumps up a star or two. You do this with a few kids per class and maybe it builds some more buzz around the program. I don't know if this is what dan was suggesting, and I don't know how often it happens in DI football recruititng but it wouldn't surprise me if coaches do it. The problem I would have is that the kid might wind up liking some of the other offers better! And if you want to build buzz it's probably better to focus on winning more games, but that's a cliche right?

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to do this unless your bonus is based on the average star rankings of your class. And there's not one idiot out there who would do something as foolish as that. Oh wait......

 

[cu73etr]

Did the Ogundeko kid have offers when we gave him one and then committed? I don't recall if he did or not. If so it wasn't many. Now look at his list of offers.

There is no better information on a kid then first hand experience. If they feel he can play at the level they want then we should welcome him with open arms.

Just my opinion by the way.