Calm before the storm (recruiting)

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DL65

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Well, maybe not storm. It's been quiet on the recruiting front for some time; however, I have a feeling that things will pick up in the next couple weeks, and in a positive way: some late time switches and unexpected commitments (high profile athletes that aren't on the proverbial radar screen.). Just a feeling. Or is it wishful thinking?

That said, recruiting under Brewster has been something Gopher fans are not used to. I remember under Wacker and to a lesser degree Mason that we'd only have about 8-10 commitments at this time. We'd be wondering what the recruiting class would look like and who was being pursued. Now, we've had the class filled, for the most part, since November and that's with some decommitments. I, for one, like this year's group, as I believe the team's needs have been addressed in most cases. We'll just have to wait until signing day and then for a couple years and see how things play out for this year's class.

Go Gophers!!
 

There may be some interesting movement with Fisch likely leaving and a couple spots hannging in the balance yet. Brew's always been good for a surprise too.
 

We are 41st in recruiting according to Rivals (worse on Scout). if we want to improve into the top 25 for recruiting and as a team we are going to have to get several 4 star recruits and not lose anyone. I want to believe but I am a realist and am having trouble seeing it. Mediocre recruiting leads to medicore teams.
 

Remember that before we lost Green we were 35. He's just one guy and because he wasn't on any of the position lists so didn't score that well for a 4*. We might not need that much to get us right back into that mid thirties, which is where the next tier of teams is. Not mediocre.
 

We've got a few schollie's to fill, unless we are saving them until next year. But Brewster said he was going to fill up this class. Not too much longer until we find out though.

I'm gonna be the guy whose spinning our recruiting rankings it this way:

To be fair CFN ranked us 67th at the end of the year. So I suppose you could say we are recruiting much higher than our station.
 


The discrepency between Scout and Rivals is amusing at one level and mind-boggling at another. I can see guys moving a star, but I think Rivals has Huff at 4 and Scout had him at 2 for most of the year. Huff is now a 3 at Scout (Hmmmmmmmm. Gained a star since he moved to TCU). Granted, he's not going to be a Gopher, but I've always found it a bit curious when a guy can jump (or fall) two stars.

I put some stock in the star ratings, but I realize a lot of it is based on prospect buzz and I do believe there is reporter bias. Rivals seems to like Brewster. Scout not so much. Truth is probably somewhere in the middle.
 

gophergrad said:
We've got a few schollie's to fill, unless we are saving them until next year. But Brewster said he was going to fill up this class. Not too much longer until we find out though.

I'm gonna be the guy whose spinning our recruiting rankings it this way:

To be fair CFN ranked us 67th at the end of the year. So I suppose you could say we are recruiting much higher than our station.
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And this is precisely how recruiting should be viewed. If you can recruit beyond your teams current strength, and then coach at least to your teams present strength it's only a matter of time.

When all is said and done I will prepare an analysis based on this premise. I'm still undecided what to use for teams current strength. I was thinking Sangarin final rankings. I think though that a recruiting class is more influenced by the preceeding years results than the current years? Maybe an average of both. Or a weighted average of the last four? What do you think?
 

Schnoodler said:
When all is said and done I will prepare an analysis based on this premise. I'm still undecided what to use for teams current strength. I was thinking Sangarin final rankings. I think though that a recruiting class is more influenced by the preceeding years results than the current years? Maybe an average of both. Or a weighted average of the last four? What do you think?
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It's an interesting question. Obviously players like Gjere and Edwards who committed early would have been more influenced by 2008 than a player like Chris Hawkins who committed later. Tangentially perhaps we won't see TCF's full effect on recruiting for a few years. But back to the point at hand it's probably a combination but whether its the last two years or a four year average is a toss up. I'd say four year average but I'm what do I know.
 




Schnoodler said:
And this is precisely how recruiting should be viewed. If you can recruit beyond your teams current strength, and then coach at least to your teams present strength it's only a matter of time.

When all is said and done I will prepare an analysis based on this premise. I'm still undecided what to use for teams current strength. I was thinking Sangarin final rankings. I think though that a recruiting class is more influenced by the preceeding years results than the current years? Maybe an average of both. Or a weighted average of the last four? What do you think?
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Always with the common sense and thought-out statements....trying to make the rest of the board look bad, eh??

As for how many years to include: if you're willing to do the work, does it make sense to run it with every year for the last 5-10, and get the value (beta?? it's been too long since stats class for me) for each successive year back, then build the equation with those values? Or do we have too small a sample to get a fair estimation like that?
 

RedPoo said:
Always with the common sense and thought-out statements....trying to make the rest of the board look bad, eh??

As for how many years to include: if you're willing to do the work, does it make sense to run it with every year for the last 5-10, and get the value (beta?? it's been too long since stats class for me) for each successive year back, then build the equation with those values? Or do we have too small a sample to get a fair estimation like that?
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The problem that I've run into is that the base data only goes back so far. The best stuff out there usually isn't that old. For instance the recruiting analysis I do relies on the rr values of rivals. They only go back so far.

I can get Sagarin back to 1998 though. So maybe.
 

Schnoodler said:
Remember that before we lost Green we were 35. He's just one guy and because he wasn't on any of the position lists so didn't score that well for a 4*. We might not need that much to get us right back into that mid thirties, which is where the next tier of teams is. Not mediocre.
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We were never 35. Green lost us about 20 points, max.
 

Schnoodler said:
And this is precisely how recruiting should be viewed. If you can recruit beyond your teams current strength, and then coach at least to your teams present strength it's only a matter of time.

When all is said and done I will prepare an analysis based on this premise. I'm still undecided what to use for teams current strength. I was thinking Sangarin final rankings. I think though that a recruiting class is more influenced by the preceeding years results than the current years? Maybe an average of both. Or a weighted average of the last four? What do you think?
Click to expand...

Perhaps you could use this - it is everyone who has a rating system

http://www.mratings.com/cf/compare.htm
 




You mean the storm of academic ineligibilities and criminal activity?
 

We may have performed as the 67th best team last year, but we are not as low as the 67th best/most appealing program. We should be recruiting, and ranking, in the top 40 almost every season.
 

Gopherprof said:
We may have performed as the 67th best team last year, but we are not as low as the 67th best/most appealing program. We should be recruiting, and ranking, in the top 40 almost every season.
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But how could you quantify that? If we were more apealing don't you think the talent would have been here already? We go back 40 years since we've fielded a team with top forty talent, althought we've had some better years. At some point you have to accept the outcomes as your base data.

How do recruits view us? That's the question. Not how should recruits view us. I contend that without a sales job recruits see us pretty much based on our on field performance. Which means about 60th.

It requires a sales job to convince recruits that we are more appealing than our results, (hopefully because it's true). That is precisely the thing I want to measure.
 

I would contend that recruits will view us differently with one or two excellent seasons which means we need a good coach who can recruit, develop players and make solid game day decisions so that we can win. Its not rocket science. Ferrentz is a good coach who gets good players to come to Iowa for Gods sake and he wins. Recruits view MN as a cold place that hasn't won in along time. Michigan, Ohio State and Iowa are cold as well. We have a nice stadium in a nice metro area....it shouldn't be that hard, should it? For what its worth, MN doesn't require a sales job as much as it requires a guy who can coach, not sell snake oils. Is Tim Brewster a good coach or a purveyor of Lucky Charms...that is the question. Regardless, in my humble opinion, with a brand new stadium, we should be able to get a good coach who can recruit good players and win. By the way, past research on MN and recruiting would be mostly meaningless because we now have a new variable in the mix,the stadium, which shows investment and should effect perception and talent.
 

Iowa is taking that next step as opposed to Wisconsin, but you'd be mistaken if you think they are vastly out recruiting us. But they should be, they have been a better team for quite a while now. In fact after i compile my data I think we're going to find that Iowa has not out recruited their position at all. Or very slightly, which is good enough.
 

This just shows that coaching matters. However, the teams that win at the highest levels in general also have great recruiting. There are certain exceptions to this rule and Iowa is one of them and so is Notre Dame. Both for different reasons. Iowa does ok recruiting and mostly wins because of great coaching and Notre Dame has great recruiting and yet their play on the field is not to the level one would expect, probably because of poor coaching. My contention is that the Gophers can get a good coach, recruit well and win at a high level. There is nothing stopping us now except making the right coaching choice. Maybe Brewster is that guy; maybe not. This upcoming year will give us a lot of answers.
 

Schnoodler said:
But how could you quantify that? If we were more apealing don't you think the talent would have been here already? We go back 40 years since we've fielded a team with top forty talent, althought we've had some better years. At some point you have to accept the outcomes as your base data.

How do recruits view us? That's the question. Not how should recruits view us. I contend that without a sales job recruits see us pretty much based on our on field performance. Which means about 60th.

It requires a sales job to convince recruits that we are more appealing than our results, (hopefully because it's true). That is precisely the thing I want to measure.
Click to expand...
60th? If nothing else, we are a BCS team, and a Big Ten team at that. That alone makes us more appealing than every non-BCS team with the possible exceptions of TCU, Boise State, Utah, and BYU. So, unless you think we are one of the very worst performing BCS schools (we're not), you're being too pessimistic, and that's not even counting the Big East.

Besides, just because something isn't quantifiable doesn't mean it's not 'true', and vice-versa.
 

Hopefully there are some guys the Gophers are recruiting that we don't know about. Nearly every guy listed on Gopher Illustrated with any type of star ranking has committed elsewhere.
 

Gopherprof said:
60th? If nothing else, we are a BCS team, and a Big Ten team at that. That alone makes us more appealing than every non-BCS team with the possible exceptions of TCU, Boise State, Utah, and BYU. So, unless you think we are one of the very worst performing BCS schools (we're not), you're being too pessimistic, and that's not even counting the Big East.

Besides, just because something isn't quantifiable doesn't mean it's not 'true', and vice-versa.
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we are what we are. I wish we were better too.
 

TCF=UnitedWeStand said:
Hopefully there are some guys the Gophers are recruiting that we don't know about. Nearly every guy listed on Gopher Illustrated with any type of star ranking has committed elsewhere.
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I'm guessing this is the situation. James Green's commitment came out of nowhere (even though it didn't stick). Or I suppose we could roll some of the extra schollies to next year.
 

loki said:
This just shows that coaching matters. However, the teams that win at the highest levels in general also have great recruiting. There are certain exceptions to this rule and Iowa is one of them and so is Notre Dame. Both for different reasons. Iowa does ok recruiting and mostly wins because of great coaching and Notre Dame has great recruiting and yet their play on the field is not to the level one would expect, probably because of poor coaching. My contention is that the Gophers can get a good coach, recruit well and win at a high level. There is nothing stopping us now except making the right coaching choice. Maybe Brewster is that guy; maybe not. This upcoming year will give us a lot of answers.
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And the fact that they don't redshirt their freshmen.
 

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