Just for laughs go over to the Rivals site and pull up the recruiting classes for Mason. Not only did we get hardly any 4 stars we typically had less than half our class as 3 stars. In addition, almost all of the 3 star guys were rated 5.5 or less as compared to the guys on this years class where we have a ton of 5.6 - 5.7 guys.
I am definitely on board for giving Brewster at least a couple more years to get these guys through the system.
Yes, but even worse than all that, it seems that most of those 3* guys didn't play (didn't make the grade academically, weren't good enough, transferred, etc. etc.).
Seriously, how many of Mason's Rivals 3*+ recruits played a significant role for the Gophers?
I posted a long analysis over a month or so back - I'm not sure if it's still accessible - about why this year's recruiting class is actually
really strong if you get past the 3* and 4* divisions and start looking at how many high-end 3* players we have committed. We currently have eleven commits rated 5.7 or higher, which I believe is about what Penn State has, and is more than Wisconsin. Also, my analysis showed that the Gopher's 2008 and 2009 classes (at least at that time) were only significantly behind Ohio State and Michigan in recruiting, essentially tied with Illinois, Michigan State, and Penn State, with Wisconsin lagging behind that group and then Purdue/Iowa, finally Northwestern/Indiana as another pulling up the rear.
This suggests that within the next few years, the Gophers should be competing regularly for 3rd place in the Big Ten (or, you can look at it as, in terms of athletic ability, competing for 1st or 2nd on a great year, 3rd-6th on an average year, 7th - 9th on a bad year, and rarely competing to stay out of the basement. If you look at Mason's teams, there were really only 2 or 3 years where we competed for a top-5 position (1999, 2003, 2004), maybe you could count 2002 as a fourth season in that regard until its major collapse to end that year.
