Fla TE Aaron Batten may commit to Gophers soon

Donate To GopherHole
S

Stan

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
4,831
Reaction score
2,982
Points
113
Batten told Rivals that he may commit to MN after he qualifies for the ACT which he is taking again on Saturday. He has a solid offer list including BCS schools like UCONN, Duke, and Kentucky and of course he has the Western Michigan sign of approval.
 

Seriously. How many thousands of offers does Western Michigan extend every year ??
 


How quickly are they returning ACT scores these days? He needs to qualify first so I wouldn't expect him to commit until at least Christmas.
 

Stan said:
Batten told Rivals that he may commit to MN after he qualifies for the ACT which he is taking again on Saturday. He has a solid offer list including BCS schools like UCONN, Duke, and Kentucky and of course he has the Western Michigan sign of approval.
Click to expand...

Looks like you are in trouble on the GI site.
 


I looked up the test results time line 2 1/2 weeks online so Christmas is about right.
 



Meh. This guy is nothing special from what I can read. With all the hype over this weekends visiting prospects I would hope the Gophers could get a 4 star or 2. In order for the program to move forward the team needs some 4 star players. Every B1G team except the Gophers has at least one 4 star for the 2013 class.
 



gopherMD said:
Meh. This guy is nothing special from what I can read. With all the hype over this weekends visiting prospects I would hope the Gophers could get a 4 star or 2. In order for the program to move forward the team needs some 4 star players. Every B1G team except the Gophers has at least one 4 star for the 2013 class.
Click to expand...

I don't know anything about this kid, but you figure he isn't special for what reason?
 

gopherMD said:
Meh. This guy is nothing special from what I can read. With all the hype over this weekends visiting prospects I would hope the Gophers could get a 4 star or 2. In order for the program to move forward the team needs some 4 star players. Every B1G team except the Gophers has at least one 4 star for the 2013 class.
Click to expand...

Bill Snyder would tell you to take those stars and shove up where the sun don't shine.
 

gopherMD said:
Meh. This guy is nothing special from what I can read. With all the hype over this weekends visiting prospects I would hope the Gophers could get a 4 star or 2. In order for the program to move forward the team needs some 4 star players. Every B1G team except the Gophers has at least one 4 star for the 2013 class.
Click to expand...

Good God some people are clueless. With where the program is at you don't go out and pull in 4 stars unless they are in staters or legacies. There the 1 4* in MN this yr., and he's going to notre dame. Baby steps, let's field a competitive team and give 4 stars a reason to pick us over all the other BCS schools. Staff showed they can field competitive team an NIU and they are certainly out recruiting themselves here, from what they were at NIU. Hopefully they can do the same here, little by little, time will tell.

Batten's film is pretty damn good. He is an academic risk so lots of schools don't recruit. Still has 4 BCS offers. Appears to be a good addition given the circumstances
 




Most coaches in AQ conferences don't make the AP top 25 without a top 25 class on the roster. But if we want to assume Kill is the next Bill Snyder then we shouldn't be at all critical. For example KSU one of the rare exceptions to the rule had the 27th ranked class in 2008.
 



sonnygarcia said:


Good God some people are clueless. With where the program is at you don't go out and pull in 4 stars unless they are in staters or legacies. There the 1 4* in MN this yr., and he's going to notre dame. Baby steps, let's field a competitive team and give 4 stars a reason to pick us over all the other BCS schools. Staff showed they can field competitive team an NIU and they are certainly out recruiting themselves here, from what they were at NIU. Hopefully they can do the same here, little by little, time will tell.

Batten's film is pretty damn good. He is an academic risk so lots of schools don't recruit. Still has 4 BCS offers. Appears to be a good addition given the circumstances
Click to expand...

Clueless? Guess again. Harbison was an out of state 4 star last year. Batten does not have a rating on ESPN and is a 2 star from Rivals. His offer list is nothing special. The Gophers have freshman Pisek and redshirt freshman Maxx Williams returning at TE next year as well as junior to be Goodger. These facts lead me to be skeptical that this kid is going to set the world on fire.
 

gopherMD said:
Clueless? Guess again. Harbison was an out of state 4 star last year. Batten does not have a rating on ESPN and is a 2 star from Rivals. His offer list is nothing special. The Gophers have freshman Pisek and redshirt freshman Maxx Williams returning at TE next year as well as junior to be Goodger. These facts lead me to be skeptical that this kid is going to set the world on fire.
Click to expand...

Tru DAT! Way to shove it in his face! 4* recruits are a dime a dozen. Just look at the Rivals (your source) rankings of the 2013 class:

From Rivals [Source]

#17 Vandy 5* - 0, 4* - 3
#21 Mississippi 5* - 0, 4* - 2
#22 Baylor 5* - 0, 4* - 1
#23 wisconsin 5* - 0, 4* - 3
#24 Illinois 5* - 0, 4* - 2
#25 Utah 5* 0, 4* - 1
 

Unregistered User said:
Tru DAT! Way to shove it in his face! 4* recruits are a dime a dozen. Just look at the Rivals (your source) rankings of the 2013 class:

From Rivals [Source]

#17 Vandy 5* - 0, 4* - 3
#21 Mississippi 5* - 0, 4* - 2
#22 Baylor 5* - 0, 4* - 1
#23 wisconsin 5* - 0, 4* - 3
#24 Illinois 5* - 0, 4* - 2
#25 Utah 5* 0, 4* - 1
Click to expand...

Where are the Gophers rated? Doesn't seem like too much to ask to compete with Ole Miss, Vandy, Illinois, and Utah in the recruiting rankings. I don't agree with saying Batten is not (or is) a good recruit, but do agree that it's a long shot to bring in bottom of the conference classes and make a ton of progress.
 

I hope Batten turns out to be the next Gronk but his credentials just don't predict that and I can't get giddy over the possibility of signing him.
 

I wonder if the Ohio State, Alabama, LSU, Oregon etc. boards have a bunch of threads complaining that they're not getting more 2 Star recruits because those guys are more "coachable"?
 

Nice video....big and fast. Have not looked but there must be big name schools offering him.
 

EG#9 said:
Where are the Gophers rated? Doesn't seem like too much to ask to compete with Ole Miss, Vandy, Illinois, and Utah in the recruiting rankings. I don't agree with saying Batten is not (or is) a good recruit, but do agree that it's a long shot to bring in bottom of the conference classes and make a ton of progress.
Click to expand...

You can't just jump in and play with the big boys. First we need to take down recruiting hotbeds like Tulane, UAB, and Wake Forest.
 

EG#9 said:
Where are the Gophers rated? Doesn't seem like too much to ask to compete with Ole Miss, Vandy, Illinois, and Utah in the recruiting rankings. I don't agree with saying Batten is not (or is) a good recruit, but do agree that it's a long shot to bring in bottom of the conference classes and make a ton of progress.
Click to expand...

I like how you conveniently avoid wisconsin and Baylor on your recounting of my list.

My response was to a post from gopherMD who made it seem as if it's as easy as falling off a log to pull in 4* recruits.

I listed 5 Universities ranked in the top 25 recruiting classes by Rivals (gopherMD's source) which average ZERO 5 star recruits and averages 2.4 FOUR star recruits per team.

In case you didn't click the link, they have Minnesota #71 with no 4 or 5 star recruits. NC State is #43 without any 4 or 5 star recruits. The highest ranked team without any 4 or 5 star recruits.

I was trying to illustrate that it is possible to put together a nice team without landing ONLY 4 and 5 star recruits. Yeah, stars matter, but it is not the death knell if you do not land only those recruits. Especially when the recruiting class is not even filled out yet.
 

Iceland12 said:
I wonder if the Ohio State, Alabama, LSU, Oregon etc. boards have a bunch of threads complaining that they're not getting more 2 Star recruits because those guys are more "coachable"?
Click to expand...

LOL. Good point. This is the only college football forum I frequent, but, like you, I am curious about what the answer would be.
 

Unregistered User said:
I like how you conveniently avoid wisconsin and Baylor on your recounting of my list.

My response was to a post from gopherMD who made it seem as if it's as easy as falling off a log to pull in 4* recruits.

I listed 5 Universities ranked in the top 25 recruiting classes by Rivals (gopherMD's source) which average ZERO 5 star recruits and averages 2.4 FOUR star recruits per team.

In case you didn't click the link, they have Minnesota #71 with no 4 or 5 star recruits. NC State is #43 without any 4 or 5 star recruits. The highest ranked team without any 4 or 5 star recruits.

I was trying to illustrate that it is possible to put together a nice team without landing ONLY 4 and 5 star recruits. Yeah, stars matter, but it is not the death knell if you do not land only those recruits. Especially when the recruiting class is not even filled out yet.
Click to expand...

Just to clarify, I purposely left off Wisconsin/Baylor because of their recent success. A lot of posters like to claim that the only way you can bring in top classes is to have had success on the field. Despite evidence at Minnesota to the contrary, this line of thinking gets repeated frequently. You make a solid point about their not being that many 4* players out there.
 

EG#9 said:
Where are the Gophers rated? Doesn't seem like too much to ask to compete with Ole Miss, Vandy, Illinois, and Utah in the recruiting rankings. I don't agree with saying Batten is not (or is) a good recruit, but do agree that it's a long shot to bring in bottom of the conference classes and make a ton of progress.
Click to expand...

Why does the ranking matter to you so much? I get what your saying, I'm not a "recruiting rankings are garbage/coach em up" guy and I'm not a guy who blindly trusts Kill with every decision. However, the one thing that I can say with almost no hesitation is that he seems to be a guy who does a nice job of finding/cultivating talent from less recruited players.

Wells, R. Williams (when we first offered), Keith, Plsek, C. Thompson, etc., these were all guys who a lot of people were saying "huh?" when they committed. I'm not saying that we need to blindly nod along with everything Kill does, but I think he's earned a bit of leeway in terms of finding talent.
 

Who should we trust?

Our GopherHole recruiting experts are again having their knickers in a twist about Kill's ability to recruit. That because they believe that Kill can't recruit because his recruiting classes are not highly ranked. It is interesting to note that the players who are taking Northern Illinois to a BCS game this year were recruited by Kill. They are actually are rated lower than the players that Kill has recruited to Minnesota. Personally, I would think that they would then maybe realize that Kill does knows more about recruiting than the recruiting services. But alas that is not the case because we are again still having this same old discussion. What does this tell us? To me it tells me that some of our GopherHole "recruiting experts" aren't really that smart. Do you think?
 

btowngopher said:
Most coaches in AQ conferences don't make the AP top 25 without a top 25 class on the roster. But if we want to assume Kill is the next Bill Snyder then we shouldn't be at all critical. For example KSU one of the rare exceptions to the rule had the 27th ranked class in 2008.
Click to expand...


Well, this year is really difficult because there are 5 non-AQ teams.

However, this year (out of the 20 AQ teams in the top 25). . .

KState (26th)
Nebraska (30th)
Oregon State (52nd)
Stanford (50th)
Louisville (55th)
Northwestern (73rd)

also WI (not ranked in AP 25) was #41

So just using your criteria (which is far from perfect), all of these teams had recruiting classes out of the top 25, yet they were each one of the 20 AQ who finished in the top 25.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Why does the ranking matter to you so much? I get what your saying, I'm not a "recruiting rankings are garbage/coach em up" guy and I'm not a guy who blindly trusts Kill with every decision. However, the one thing that I can say with almost no hesitation is that he seems to be a guy who does a nice job of finding/cultivating talent from less recruited players.

Wells, R. Williams (when we first offered), Keith, Plsek, C. Thompson, etc., these were all guys who a lot of people were saying "huh?" when they committed. I'm not saying that we need to blindly nod along with everything Kill does, but I think he's earned a bit of leeway in terms of finding talent.
Click to expand...

I am personally more interested in offers than rankings, though they normally go hand in hand. I personally don't think that Kill has earned any leeway in terms of finding talent...yet. The Gophers were 2-6 in conference play in arguably the weakest year for the conference in my lifetime. To make matters worse, they were really only pseudo competitive in one of those losses (Northwestern). I am not sure what to make of Wells as he looked good in the non-conference portion of the schedule and then seemed to struggle quite a bit in B1G play (he was always banged up which makes an evaluation unfair). Williams showed some flashes of being a solid guy, but he also eventually received an Iowa offer. I will (and have) given Kill and his staff credit for offering a few guys early before other schools got on them. It's possible that the staff can put together a very good team while bringing in classes that are ranked very low, it's just not likely from a statistical standpoint (which is how my mind works). There will always be Greg Eslingers who were lightly recruited that turn in to excellent players, but there are usually not enough of them. The best players on this years team? Gray, Wilhite, Carter, Hageman, Stoudermire(down year IMHO)...all had solid to impressive offers out of high school as did the next tier of guys like Kirkwood, Vereen, etc.

Killjoy- Northern Illinois plays in the MAC and won a competitive game against Kansas. If you want to argue that is a team with BCS talent, you'd certainly be in the minority. That is not to say that Kill shouldn't be praised for the work he did there but those players do not have to compete with Michigan and Nebraska. I'd be the first to admit that Kill knows more about recruiting than I do. He's a head football coach at a D-1 school with plenty of experience. That doesn't mean that I can't look at the information available to me and come to an informed decision on what is LIKELY to be the result of recruiting classes ranked in the bottom tier of the conference. Hopefully, Jerry Kill can buck trends and win at an impressive level with recruiting classes ranked 8th or worse in the B1G.
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom