Diaco on stars and recruiting

[kemba]

Good, honest, stuff

http://courantblogs.com/uconn-footb...ss/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

 

[Jerry27]

That last bit seemed to me to not be needed. After PP and GDL my expectations have been curbed sufficiently, reminding me just feels like a curb stomp, especially coming from the energy bucket. Although some do need a serious curb stomp in their expectations!

 

[noeynox]

It seemed people always made excuses as to why we couldn't attract highly rated players to UConn while in a BCS conference, imagine the job Diaco has in front of him now. Surprised it took him this long to say it. Still get your bathing suits ready.

 

[Dooley]

He's exactly right. We're not getting 4 and 5 star recruits but the class that we're bringing has me SO fired up! There is a plan in place. Athletic two sport stars with huge frames. Put them in Coach Balis' strength program and our facilities for a few years and you have NFL size bodies with athleticism. I LOVE seeing the coaching staff put our Burton complex to good use!

 

[uconndogs]

The way Diaco speaks reminds me of Calhoun. There are like 8 different thoughts they are trying to convey in each sentence. Let's hope he's as successful.

Here's the bad news about recruiting. We are not getting 4 and 5 star recruits.

Here's the good news. We don't need 4 and 5 star recruits to be successful.

 

[DoctorWho85]

I'm not worried about 4 or 5 star recruits. Many teams across the country have done very well with 2 and 3 star recruits, so in my opinion highly rated recruits isn't needed for this program. Remember Dwayne Difton? If memory serves me correctly he was a 4 star WR from Florida. He caught what like 3 passes in his career at UConn? What is needed is exactly what Diaco said. Players that will fit his system and want to be here.

 

[uconndogs]

I'm not worried about 4 or 5 star recruits. Many teams across the country have done very well with 2 and 3 star recruits, so in my opinion highly rated recruits isn't needed for this program. Remember Dwayne Difton? If memory serves me correctly he was a 4 star WR from Florida. He caught what like 3 passes in his career at UConn? What is needed is exactly what Diaco said. Players that will fit his system and want to be here.

I do remember Difton and he was a talented kid. He caught his first pass in UCONN's first game of his true freshman year against Ohio. He tried to juke the corner who picked him up and the safety came over and stripped the ball before the corner threw him down like a rag doll. Kid was not even remotely physically ready to be playing at that level.

Interestingly, the kid Mike Lang who was recruited in the same class was a 2 star rated recruit and he was an absolute stud of an athlete. Classic example of how silly the star system can be. Lang was a superior athlete and player in almost every regard.

 

[Dooley]

I'm not worried about 4 or 5 star recruits. Many teams across the country have done very well with 2 and 3 star recruits, so in my opinion highly rated recruits isn't needed for this program. Remember Dwayne Difton? If memory serves me correctly he was a 4 star WR from Florida. He caught what like 3 passes in his career at UConn? What is needed is exactly what Diaco said. Players that will fit his system and want to be here.

Difton and Jerrell Miller were both 4-star recruits out of high school and were both non-factors. Shak Phillips and Zach Frazier were 4-stars out of high school that transferred to UCONN but UCONN hasn't had much success with highly rated high school kids. We have outstanding facilities. If we used them, we don't have to battle other programs for the 4 and 5 star guys. We can find kids who fit our program who WANT TO BE HERE and turn them into NFL sized prospects. I for one LOVE what Diaco and staff are doing.

 

[Husky25]

I love what Coach Diaco has done for UConn's program thus far and I will admit that he has forgotten more about football than I would know in 1,000 lifetimes, but he is putting the traditional 2nd tier spin on recruiting here.

Included in the top 50 prospects for the 2014 NFL Draft, 8 were 5* recruits. That doesn't seem like much, but now re-do the math given that only about 30 players are generally rated 5 stars on an annual basis. Just under half (23) of the top 50 prospects were 4 star recruits. That leaves 19 of 50 spots to be split over 3* (16), 2*(3), 1* (0) and NR (0) recruits.

50 prospects accounts for just over a round and a half of NFL prospects. Granted that these were not necessarily the 1st 50 picks and it is also not to say that NR-3* recruits can't make it in the NFL, but it seems they are being picked later in the draft and the numbers suggest that they are at a disadvantage from the get go.

That said, UConn has had good success placing both skilled players and big Uglies in the NFL, and given that 85% of all high school recruits are anything but a 4 or 5 star recruit, the vast majority of teams not based in Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, Athens, South Central Los Angeles, Austin, Ann Arbor, and South Bend are comprised of such a player.

Two undeniable facts remain (at least to me):
1) These services are mostly paid sites and cater to their customers.
2) No site or handful thereof can rank over 2,500 high school recruits. Given 1), there is bound to be a chicken-or-egg effect (the proverbial question of whether Bama recruits 5* athletes, or if an athlete is 5* because he tweeted notice of a phone call from the Tide's special teams' quality control intern.).

 

[UconnFamily]

The last draft was mostly 3 and 4 star kids in the first round, with more 4 than 3 stars. However, I like the way Diaco and the rest of the staff is recruiting. I have a feeling that Diaco will build Uconn to a place where 4 star kids want to come a play.

 

[sportsart]

Of our 14+ NFL draft pics, none were 4/5 star players.

With the experience this staff has, I am confident they can coach up the players they are bringing in.

 

[rich1122]

The way Diaco speaks reminds me of Calhoun. There are like 8 different thoughts they are trying to convey in each sentence. Let's hope he's as successful.

Here's the bad news about recruiting. We are not getting 4 and 5 star recruits.

Here's the good news. We don't need 4 and 5 star recruits to be successful.

Have we EVER gotten 4 or 5 star recruits? Difton lasted a season. Amazingly Todman was 3 star. Nothing new here. Since 2009 we have not had very much luck keeping classes together, often losing 50%. Get kids who you can coach and develop for 5 years. We have not done that consistently.

 

[DOZE860]

not for nothing, i was looking at BC and Cuse recruiting for this year, and it seems like they are saying the samething we are... they aren't pulling in the 4 and 5 star guys either, even with P5 so-called recruiting advantage .. they just have more commits to date then us.. i think we are on the right track, and still be able to compete with them.

 

[upstater]

I love what Coach Diaco has done for UConn's program thus far and I will admit that he has forgotten more about football than I would know in 1,000 lifetimes, but he is putting the traditional 2nd tier spin on recruiting here.

Included in the top 50 prospects for the 2014 NFL Draft, 8 were 5* recruits. That doesn't seem like much, but now re-do the math given that only about 30 players are generally rated 5 stars on an annual basis. Just under half (23) of the top 50 prospects were 4 star recruits. That leaves 19 of 50 spots to be split over 3* (16), 2*(3), 1* (0) and NR (0) recruits.

50 prospects accounts for just over a round and a half of NFL prospects. Granted that these were not necessarily the 1st 50 picks and it is also not to say that NR-3* recruits can't make it in the NFL, but it seems they are being picked later in the draft and the numbers suggest that they are at a disadvantage from the get go.

That said, UConn has had good success placing both skilled players and big Uglies in the NFL, and given that 85% of all high school recruits are anything but a 4 or 5 star recruit, the vast majority of teams not based in Tuscaloosa, Baton Rouge, Athens, South Central Los Angeles, Austin, Ann Arbor, and South Bend are comprised of such a player.

Two undeniable facts remain (at least to me):
1) These services are mostly paid sites and cater to their customers.
2) No site or handful thereof can rank over 2,500 high school recruits. Given 1), there is bound to be a chicken-or-egg effect (the proverbial question of whether Bama recruits 5* athletes, or if an athlete is 5* because he tweeted notice of a phone call from the Tide's special teams' quality control intern.).

Edsall isn't here anymore, but Edsall had as much success with 2 stars (25%+) as the top programs have with 5 stars (25% in the NFL).

 

[uconndogs]

not for nothing, i was looking at BC and Cuse recruiting for this year, and it seems like they are saying the samething we are... they aren't pulling in the 4 and 5 star guys either, even with P5 so-called recruiting advantage .. they just have more commits to date then us.. i think we are on the right track, and still be able to compete with them.

This is absolutely correct.

Many of those posters believe they recruit at a far higher level - they have always believed that - even when we kicked the crap out of the Orange as an annual right of passage. The differential between recruiting talent between the likes of UCONN, Cuse and BC is minimal. Texas, Bama, Oklahoma, USC, sure, I get it, but middle and lower tier P5, absolutely not.

We'll have a BC knucklehead here in about 2 minutes and then an Orange poster to tell us that Jim Brown once took a pi$$ in Syracuse......

 

[ShakyTheMohel]

Does anyone know BD"s reputation for recuiting at his other stops? Meaning..was he known for seeing talent in low profile recruits....or was he the guy able to land the big time recruit?

BD sounds a lot like RE when he talks recruiting....and RE was able to back it up by developing kids and getting them in the NFL. I hope BD is at least as good at this. We won't know for a few years.

 

[Palatine]

I want six-star recruits.

 

[Jerry27]

I see where you're going, but what if someone comes out with a 7 *?

 

[Jarhead_1775]

I see where you're going, but what if someone comes out with a 7 *?

No! No one needs seven stars! That's too many!
#7minuteabs

 

[LRock34]

Christ we are still talking about this?!?!? With the exception of a handful of fans this fan base stopped caring about star rankings and offers a LOOOONG time ago. We've been getting 2 star recruits for 12 years now and we've seen plenty of them drafted. Weve seen our four star recruits fail miserably. 12 years into this thing MOST of us understand that development is far more important than Rivals rankings and we also fully understand that we are not going to compete for the top 100 ranked kids.

I'm actually kind of offended by the article. It implies that we are amateur college football fans who need a lecture on how college recruiting works. That's not Diaco's fault. I put it on Dez for generalizing the fan base based on Whaler and 3 to 4 other posters that are still crying over stars 12 years later and some of whom (whaler) have an a ax to grind as PP and GDL apologists.

That article was a complete waste of the fan base and coaches time. We get it, we know who we are. 99% of the fans at the rent don't even follow recruiting. The few hundred on here do and less than 10% of us car about rankings.

Just worry about winning coach. That's all MOST of us care about.

 

[UconnFamily]

not for nothing, i was looking at BC and Cuse recruiting for this year, and it seems like they are saying the samething we are... they aren't pulling in the 4 and 5 star guys either, even with P5 so-called recruiting advantage .. they just have more commits to date then us.. i think we are on the right track, and still be able to compete with them.

I have to disagree with you "DOZE860". Syracuse has been recruiting ALOT better since joining the ACC. Last year they had 1 4* player (KJ Williams) and a whole lot of ranked 3* players. This year according to 247sports Syracuse has 2 potential 4* players (Strickland and Kelly). BC has Palazzo who according to rivals is a 4* recruit with a few ranked 3* players. If we (Uconn) were in a p5 conference, we too would be recruiting a lot better.

 

[UconnFamily]

I have to disagree with you "DOZE860". Syracuse has been recruiting ALOT better since joining the ACC. Last year they had 1 4* player (KJ Williams) and a whole lot of ranked 3* players. This year according to 247sports Syracuse has 2 potential 4* players (Strickland and Kelly). BC has Palazzo who according to rivals is a 4* recruit with a few ranked 3* players. If we (Uconn) were in a p5 conference, we too would be recruiting a lot better.

Correction: Polazzolo I guess just dropped from a 4* to a ranked (53) 3*

 

[DOZE860]

I have to disagree with you "DOZE860". Syracuse has been recruiting ALOT better since joining the ACC. Last year they had 1 4* player (KJ Williams) and a whole lot of ranked 3* players. This year according to 247sports Syracuse has 2 potential 4* players (Strickland and Kelly). BC has Palazzo who according to rivals is a 4* recruit with a few ranked 3* players. If we (Uconn) were in a p5 conference, we too would be recruiting a lot better.

i don't know about all of that but check this link...
http://syracusefan.com/threads/for-...elf-how-does-our-class-stack-to-others.77599/
their posters sound a lot like ours in terms of their class lacking the star power. i guess you could say that their recruits have more P5 offers then ours...but really it just seems like they are going after under the radar players, and trying to coach them up, like our staff is.

 

[Javi525]

.but really it just seems like they are going after under the radar players, and trying to coach them up, like our staff is.

Straight out of the ol' Edsall playbook. Too bad his play calling never progressed beyond vanilla

 

[Hoophound]

Diaco is providing a glimpse of truth when saying conference affiliation matters. He also said we can build a great team and we will. That is fair. He is planning to build something but people that want him to declare it built before his first game need to get some perspective. Right now we offer a cool, young staff, great facilities and good academics. Getting a reputation as a prime destination for great high school football players will take a few years of serious winning.

I believe that Arkeel Newsome and Casey Cochran are the tandem that will take the fan base and the program's status to another level. The fact they are both local kids is just gravy. I have a good feeling about this.