Would be kind of rough to drop Brunelle much after she missed most of the HS season due to foot surgery.
It is very interesting to see the changes in rank over time. Thanks for posting this.
I guess it's a question of what we think the rankings are supposed to indicate - all other things equal, missing a year due to a foot injury will make Brunelle a comparatively worse player than she otherwise would have been, because she will have a year less experience coming into college. And there's always a chance that this could be a sign of a potential risk of recurring injuries down the road.
In one sense, yeah, it sucks to be downgraded for something that's not your fault. But if the point of the rankings are to predict college output, it's hard to argue Brunelle isn't comparatively less competitive as a recruit than she was a year ago. (In the same way that in the past year it's become very clear that Belibi has grown a ton as a player and should be higher than the 23rd - probably around the top 10).
And I think the same is true for all the others: ONO missing a year of high school probably made her a little less starter-ready when she showed up in Storrs. She's clearly closing the gap, but I suspect it's taking longer than it would have had she never been injured. And same for Williams, etc.
Tara made an interesting comment about one of our starters, Dijonai Carrington, at the beginning of last season. Although Carrington was starting her junior year, Tara said she thought of her as a sophomore "experience wise" because she had missed her entire HS senior year with an ACL tear. Tara said it was noticeable when she showed up at Stanford that Carrington hadn't had the playing time of her peers and that it took her some time to make it up. She's now closed the gap, in Tara's view, but it took her longer to get there. (And if memory serves, her recruiting ranking had dropped after she missed her senior season with the injury.)
So while it sucks, for sure, I think it's reasonable if the purpose of the recruiting rankings is to predict college output.