No rock living for me. I understand the preps and jucos. But I think it's better to have a discussion without name calling. I understand the knee jerk reaction to constant negativity, but it's sophomoric to just say rah rah and bury one's head in the sand.
In any event,
247 is a composite ranking. So if they're unranked by one of the services when commited, a uconn verbal will get them two stars. Rightly or wrongly, that's the way the game is played.
But a big point: the rising senior 2014 class will see a minimum of 15 commits. Notwithstanding grayshirts or the juco guys that come. Just the rising senior commits. You can't run an fbs program on fewer than 15 rising senior recruits. In fact, you'll only find 3 or 4 bcs school's in the last five years having offered fewer than 15 rising senior recruits since. And they all have a story, eg, usc reggie bush scholly restrictions, clemson 2009 (dabo swinney's dandy dozen/bowden's october departure). That's a total of about five recruiting classes out of 350.
But still a bigger point: the services in the rankings don't include all greyshirts. For example, bradley bozeman a 4* ol for alabama will enroll in january 2014. He's not listed by rivals but is by scout. Every bcs school has greyshirts that don't show up in their expected class enrollment year. Notorious greyshirt programs like tennessee (see tino thomas) usually have the greyshirts show up in their original senior class.
So it is a canard to suggest since fuchs, summers, boland, britton are greyshirting UConn's class of 2014 is better than it appears as EACH school can make the same claim. Importantly, what happens to uconn's 2013 ranking by the services if you take out the greyshirts( which the services DO NOT)? UConn would probably lose 8-10 slots and slide to 70-75 or so under this hypothetical/not done scenario for the 2013 class.
I don't mean to name call or get too personal. This time of year is a chance for every hardcore fan to be optimistic for the near future. We have many obstacles to overcome but I've seen 1 too many of these posts regarding how crappy our recruiting class
appears to be. And in this case at least the perception and the truth are vastly different. Many people don't realize or factor in the surplus in kids we have wrapped on schollys, the kids we have greyshirted or harbored @ JC's, the fact that many of our 4th year Juniors are a big part of our team and most likely coming back for their 5th years.
Coach PP is what he is, I'm not trying to debate here about anything but his recruiting right now but with that said his recruiting is just fine. I would characterize it as great but its certainly not bad. Amidst a very trying time with CR we are getting quality guys for a program like us. Last years haul was one of the best we have ever had. I say all that knowing we won't be pull in 4 and 5 star fish until we rid ourselves of the AAC and start winning. To your point though, the answer is the 2013 class still looks darn good without the likes of the 5 guys who were greyshirted (Wright, Boland, Britton, Summers, and Fuchs)...
Another thing that isn't factored into you're argument there is that PP has done a very good job getting guys transferring from other big time programs (ie. Phillips, Whitmer, Mateas, Stewart, Donahue...(Knappe didn't transfer but I don't think he was part of the recruiting sites) These guys take up roster spots yet don't count toward our recruiting rankings. So our classes shrink by a little. Going forward there's no reason to not believe that PP can pick up some transfers and JC guys along the way for this small class when he has open spots available to do so.
And lets not go the root of comparing UCONN to Alabama. Or some other big time program that brings in 25 kids each year because they send 5-6 kids to the pro's early or doesn't re-up scholarships for some of the upperclassman who aren't making the 2 deep.
When it comes down to it there's no reason to be worrying in early July about recruiting rankings and where we compare to the likes of Akron or some other shlep team that may have lots of schollys to hand out and have gotten lucky early on in getting commitments from local guys. Coach PP has many other areas to be critiqued first but lets maintain positivity until the season starts at the very least. Please I beg you and all others. This class will be good not large but good in quality. Kids with experience coming from PREP and JUCO. And the class will fill all of our "needs" (i had "holes" first figured I should change it)....Instant impact guys are personally what I want anyways for a big promise 2014 year with experience all over the field.
