ESPN: FBall Recruiting Rewind

Football Recruiting14

College Football’s national signing day is this week, so you will run across a lot of football recruiting talk in the coming days. 

As it relates to NC State recruiting, we’ve been trying to keep things somewhat streamlined in the blog and our forums for you.  This link will take you to page 9 of a long thread on our forums where we have tracked/discussed football recruiting and commitments the last few weeks.  You can go backward or forward from there.  Don’t miss the recruit we landed this weekend – Ty McGill,  a 6’2" 280 pound defensive tackle, 3 star prospect (Scout.com).

This morning, ESPN has a look back at the rankings of the players that were named All-ACC this year.  I love these kinds of retrospectives.  Look at how far down the individual position rankings most of these kids were.

OFFENSE
QB: Tyrod Taylor, Virginia Tech:No. 16 player in ESPNU 150, No. 3 overall quarterback in the 2007 class
RB: Montel Harris, Boston College: No. 143 running back in the 2008 class
RB: Anthony Allen, Georgia Tech: No. 73 running back in Louisville’s class of 2007
WR Leonard Hankerson, Miami: No. 61 wide receiver in 2007 class
WR Torrey Smith, Maryland: No. 54 wide receiver in 2007 class
TE George Bryan, NC State: No. 16 tight end, class of 2007
C Sean Bedford, Georgia Tech: Joined the team as a walk-on in 2006
OL Rodney Hudson, Florida State: No. 16 offensive guard in the 2007 class
OL Anthony Castonzo, Boston College: Not ranked in the 2007 class
OL Chris Hairston, Clemson: Not ranked in the class of 2006
OL Brandon Washington, Miami: No. 11 offensive guard in 2008 class

DEFENSE
DL Da’Quan Bowers, Clemson:No. 1 overall player in ESPNU 150 Class of 2008, No. 1 overall defensive end
DL Brandon Jenkins, Florida State: No. 18 defensive end in the 2009 class
DL Quinton Coples, North Carolina: No. 34 defensive end, class of 2008
DL Jarvis Jenkins, Clemson: No. 36 defensive tackle in the 2007 class
LB Luke Kuechly, Boston College: No. 19 outside linebacker
LB Nate Irving, NC State: Not ranked, class of 2006
LB Alex Wujciak, Maryland: No. 18 inside linebacker class of 2006
CB Jayron Hosley, Virginia Tech: No. 22 cornerback in 2009 class
CB Chase Minnifield, Virginia: No. 69 cornerback, class of 2007
S DeAndre McDaniel, Clemson: No. 105 in ESPNU 150 Class of 2006, No. 12 safety
S Kenny Tate, Maryland: No. 134 in ESPNU 150 Class of 2008, No. 19 wide receiver
SPECIALISTS
P: Matt Bosher, Miami: No. 4 kicker in 2006 class
K: Will Snyderwine, Duke: Joined the team as a walk-on in 2007 after an open tryout
PR: Tony Logan, Maryland: No. 21 quarterback in 2007 class
KR: David Wilson, Virginia Tech: No. 40 in ESPNU 150 Class of 2009, No. 5 running back

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Football Recruiting

14 Responses to ESPN: FBall Recruiting Rewind

  1. Pack1997 01/31/2011 at 10:25 AM #

    I would love to see how TOB classes would have ranked 3-4 years after they were signed. This is just a clear example that coaching, and having kids who will work hard to get better is just as important as potential.

    I also think recuting rankings are far less important for football than basketball. There are so many kids for football that being able to evaluate them adequately is impossible.

  2. ncsumatman 01/31/2011 at 10:33 AM #

    I suppose this years senior class would have been ranked 25th

  3. McPete 01/31/2011 at 10:48 AM #

    Looks like, for this year anyway, the recruiting rankings matter more for defensive players. But I think that’s been the case for a while now. O line rankings are often off for some reason, QB too, but it looks like Nate and maybe the UVA CB are the only two ‘sleepers’ on the defense.

  4. tjfoose1 01/31/2011 at 12:31 PM #

    “O line rankings are often off for some reason…”

    They always will be. Most recruiting analysts simply look at size. Lots more to playing OL than just the physical. Quick feet, leverage, and brain power are just as important. Also, many DL converts become top OL’s.

  5. Lunatic Fringe 01/31/2011 at 1:04 PM #

    The issue with rankings is that it is ALL opinions, quite often wrapped in preferences, prejudices, and politics so should be taken will a grain of salt.

    For instance, Notre Dame always has a strong showing at the Army All-Star game, but all these studs don’t really convert to collegiate success. Mike Farrell may try to be objective (debatable), but it does seem ND gets benefit of doubt when it comes to their rankings.

    The Army All Star game is held on NBC so it goes to be expected that they are catering to their ND audience.

  6. ncsslim 01/31/2011 at 1:44 PM #

    I believe that if FSU as much as offers a player it brings an extra star. I’m sure they are not the only one, but it certainly swings the rating exercise in their favor, and honestly, they haven’t been doing much with supposedly superior players for the past decade. Even with what appears to be an upgrade in the program, they are not remotely as daunting as, say Alabama, from a personnel prospective in the actual game setting. There’s very little objectivity to the process, much like the “rankings” of institutes of higher learning.

  7. adwomack 01/31/2011 at 2:05 PM #

    Well, since the ACC was one of the worst conferences in the country this year including being behind the WAC and MWC(but ahead of Big East!), it is not shocking that even our top players were not highly recruited.

    I would be interested to see this list from the SEC as well.

  8. gtspack 01/31/2011 at 5:43 PM #

    Your right Pack 1997, in basketball all the kids play in aau tournaments. So you will have a 5-star recruit guarding a 5-star recruit and you have a good idea of what your getting. With football you only have shrine bowls and such. You just can’t gauge them as easily. I will take my chances with TOB grooming 3-star recruits with character and a work ethic over a tarhole 5-star thug.

  9. packalum44 01/31/2011 at 5:54 PM #

    Although somewhat skewed by specialist, the ACC had more NFL players than the SEC just a few years ago. For those in Chapel Hill, college talent is better measured by NFL players matriculating than high school stars. Its like comparing pre-season rankings (e.g. Harrison Barnes) to post-season rankings.

    The talent gap is not as wide as some believe (although the bottom half of the SEC is much better than bottom half of ACC). I think the coaching gap is much more important.

  10. Primewolf 01/31/2011 at 8:45 PM #

    StateFans et al.

    It is really easy to misread this type of data. There are many textbook examples and classical papers on conditional probability and Bayesian inference that indicate the problems of not conditioning the probabilities before drawing conclusions.

    Let me try a simple, crude example by way of explanation. Suppose there are only two groups of football recruits. Three stars and no stars. Suppose that 10% of the recruits are 3* and 90% are 0*. Now we know that stars are no guarantee of success, but that historical data suggests that, say, 3* players have a 10% chance of success and 0* players have a 1% chance of success. When we compute the unconditional probability of success from these groups we must multiply the conditional prob of success by the probability a player is in the group. So, the prob of success for the 3* is 10% x 10% =1.0% and for the 1* is 90% x 1% = 0.9%. This says they would be about equally represented as being successful, where success = all ACC.

    Hence, don’t be surprised to see alot of no ranked and lowly ranked players in such data because the population of such players is much larger than the population of higly ranked players.

    The other fallacy one can fall into is that we don’t have the data on the population of ACC players from which the all ACC players were selected. That is, the #18 linebacker on all the ACC team means nothing if we don’t know all the rankings of ACC players playing at the time he was selected. There may have only been a few others ranked higher that were juniors or seniors (those that typically make all ACC at certain positions) at the time he was selected to all ACC. This means the population must also be conditioned by the ACC players in the pool before one can make any conclusions about ranking and success.

    It would be nice to have all the data (and time) to develop the conditional probabilities and group frequencies to see how important recruit rankings really are.

    I think that *s mean a higher conditional prob of success on average, but that the * ranking system is +- one* about 80-90% of the time with larger errors on the margin.

  11. runwiththepack 01/31/2011 at 11:03 PM #

    HOW can we expect a ncsu team to win if its recruits average only 2.26*’s??? How???

    To give you an idea of what I was referring to in an earlier post, regarding TOB recruiting “peculiarities”, I compiled a Scout.com summary of his last 5 recruiting classes. I included only ’02 to ’06 bec. that’s as far back as it goes on scout.com.

    You all know he had good records (on the actual FIELD) in his last few years at BC, and that BC had good records in the couple years after he left. Those are the years that these recruits became upper-classmen.

    So, you might find it interesting to know that his 91 recruits rated an AVERAGE OF 2.26 stars over that period, including 10 that had NO STARS AT ALL! In other words, less than half of his recruits had more than 2 stars.

    5*? – only one! In 5 years! But that Brian Toal was a good one, huh?
    4*? – almost one per yr! Whoa. Let’s not hog all those good recruits!
    3*? – 33
    2*? – 43! The most popular recruit. What in the heck is it about those 2*-ers that TOB likes so much? A real head-scratcher there, eh?

  12. PackerInRussia 02/01/2011 at 3:42 AM #

    Primewolf, thanks for the explanation. That makes a lot of sense. I still enjoy the approach of the initial article as well, though. I wonder how the * ranking would look for the All-America team since you’re looking at the whole pool of 5, 4, 3, and <3 *'s together.

  13. StateFans 02/01/2011 at 10:13 AM #

    runwiththepack,

    I am confused that your point is that we can’t be good with this type of recruiting coming off a 9-4 season?

  14. runwiththepack 02/01/2011 at 12:01 PM #

    StateFans,

    I’m just poking fun at the state-haters who make fun of our
    unheralded recruits (yeah- the ones that beat their teams). Sarcasm. NCSU has several 3* players (and a few 4*) that had other options besides NCSU. This year NCSU played as well as some teams that have rosters with hardly anyone less than 3*, as well as a bunch of 4* or 5* rated recruits. It was a trend in his successful tenure at BC, and I hope it is becoming one here, too.

    It appears to me that TOB does his own recruit evaluation, but i don’t know exactly how he decides that a highly rated recruit is over-rated, or a lightly rated recruit is under-rated. I’m merely speculating that he and his staff are top-notch evaluators of talent. All us fans have to go on is how many stars a service gives a recruit, size, etc…. And their big prep stats may often be more to the credit of their teammates.

    TOB has seemed to often ignore lots of stars attached to recruits. He seems to gun just as hard for lots of lower-ranked players, (having seen something in them that others missed?). Given his Marine demeanor, I am betting that he is a pretty good judge of how dedicated a kid will be in improving himself in college. Even 5* players often need work to get up to the college level (judging by Amato’s numerous 4*/5* recruits that passed through). They didn’t always step right into the starting lineup in Raleigh and become all-ACC – maybe because they didn’t want to work at it enough.

    Amato would take 2* recruits at the END of recruiting season, apparently when he didn’t get the commitment from his primary targets. But notice that several 2* recruits were offered in the BEGINNING of the recruiting period this year, when there was no apparent desperation to fill a roster at that early time.

    Isn’t that similar to how Wake Forest was recruiting in the years leading up to their haydays recently?

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