New Commit: Eric Murray

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RT @GEricksonScout: Full story up later on the #Gophers newest commit Eric Murray
 


I wonder if they see him as a wr or as a db? I know they got a good look at him at the camp, but it kinda makes ya wonder why he didn't get an offer from CMU or NIU at their camps.
 

The quote from Sawvel was call us if you want to be a big ten defensive back so I'm guessing that means he'll be a defensive back.
 




According to the GopherHoles front page interview, Murray is neither big, nor fast, and has no other offers. It is getting tougher and tougher to see a scenario where we avoid the bottom 3 or 4 of the Big Ten recruiting rankings.
 

EG#9 said:
According to the GopherHoles front page interview, Murray is neither big, nor fast, and has no other offers. It is getting tougher and tougher to see a scenario where we avoid the bottom 3 or 4 of the Big Ten recruiting rankings.
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Well to be fair it was tough to see a scenario where we avoided the bottom 3 or 4 before recruiting even began. I mean we have been finishing down there in wins, and geography wise we are in a pretty tough spot compared to the rest of the conference. And Kill doesn't come in being tagged as a big recruiter like Brewster was.
 




They had him in camp, they got to see him in action, I doubt they'd have offered if they didn't feel he could contribute. Welcome aboard!
 

MNGoldenGophers1 said:
Let's hope Kill sees something no one else does.
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I keep telling myself that. This guy's a football coach and he's been pretty good at it, but these aren't the kind of recruits that are going to get people excited. I frankly think that anyone who's coached D1 football is a better evaluator of talent than some turd who works for a recruiting site, but we'll see.
 

He was timed at 4.59 at camp, which likely means electonically, he is 5'11" those are ok numbers as a defensive back.
 

Apparently, the kid is a WR and has never played DB. The staff ran him at DB and supposedly he shut everyone down including McDonald.
 



harrys ghost said:
Apparently, the kid is a WR and has never played DB. The staff ran him at DB and supposedly he shut everyone down including McDonald.
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Like the thought of that...I would still like to see the Gophers get a few more DB commits as well.
 

This staff seems to be very confident in what they want and they have no problem pulling the trigger on someone they feel fits their need regardless of who has offered. I'm OK with that. Sounds like this kid is from a poor area of Milwaukee, there is no video out there of him, some of these kids probably just fall through the cracks. Lets hope the staff's quick trigger means that they needed to get in before other people noticed the kid???
 

sonnygarcia said:
This staff seems to be very confident in what they want and they have no problem pulling the trigger on someone they feel fits their need regardless of who has offered. I'm OK with that. Sounds like this kid is from a poor area of Milwaukee, there is no video out there of him, some of these kids probably just fall through the cracks. Lets hope the staff's quick trigger means that they needed to get in before other people noticed the kid???
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Riverside is hardly in a poor area of Milwaukee. Milwaukee is interesting because basically everything east of the Milwaukee river is wealthy, while everything west of the Milwaukee river is not (until you reach the suburbs). Directly east of Riverside High is the "East Side" which is probably the most desirable area in Milwaukee to live aside from the 3rd Ward. Directly west of Riverside is one of Milwaukee's worst neighborhoods.

The issue is that Milwaukee public schools are some of the absolute worst in the country. So while Riverside is just barely east of the river and in an excellent neighborhood, it is likely that most students there are from west of the river because most parents on the "East Side" send their kids to private school.

For example, go to Google maps and check out street view at the corner of Center and Martin Luther King vs. the corner of Park and Lake. Riverside High is equidistant between the two but the neighborhoods are VERY different.
 

Sour1729 said:
Riverside is hardly in a poor area of Milwaukee. Milwaukee is interesting because basically everything east of the Milwaukee river is wealthy, while everything west of the Milwaukee river is not (until you reach the suburbs). Directly east of Riverside High is the "East Side" which is probably the most desirable area in Milwaukee to live aside from the 3rd Ward. Directly west of Riverside is one of Milwaukee's worst neighborhoods.

The issue is that Milwaukee public schools are some of the absolute worst in the country. So while Riverside is just barely east of the river and in an excellent neighborhood, it is likely that most students there are from west of the river because most parents on the "East Side" send their kids to private school.
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Correct, I went to school at the University of Milwaukee, much nicer area then Marquette. I'll trust Kill and his staff on evaluating these players, but I still kind of wonder if some of these kids could have been slow played a bit more like Fruechte and this kid for example. Sounds like no one really knew about Fruechte and he wanted to come to Minnesota all along anyways, and this new verbal had already slipped by 2 MAC camps and appeared to be Kill's little secret as a db. I just wonder if Kill could have landed these guys much later and gone after bigger fish, but who knows.
 

btowngopher said:
Well to be fair it was tough to see a scenario where we avoided the bottom 3 or 4 before recruiting even began. I mean we have been finishing down there in wins, and geography wise we are in a pretty tough spot compared to the rest of the conference. And Kill doesn't come in being tagged as a big recruiter like Brewster was.
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The geography excuse doesn't fly when you get outrecruited by Iowa or Wisconsin. My point has been, and will continue to be, that the Gophers could not go backwards in recruiting with this hire. They may have needed a more experienced coach, but bringing in a more experienced coach who then brings in lesser players does not move us up the chain. There's no reason to start excusing poor recruiting again when Brewster was able to land guys with major offers as an unknown coach coming off a disastrous first year.
 

EG#9 said:
The geography excuse doesn't fly when you get outrecruited by Iowa or Wisconsin. My point has been, and will continue to be, that the Gophers could not go backwards in recruiting with this hire. They may have needed a more experienced coach, but bringing in a more experienced coach who then brings in lesser players does not move us up the chain. There's no reason to start excusing poor recruiting again when Brewster was able to land guys with major offers as an unknown coach coming off a disastrous first year.
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The geography excuse flies when you combine it with the wins and losses excuse like I did. Easy to see why we get out recruited by Iowa and Wisconsin. What advantage does Minnesota have in recruiting over the rest of the big10? 1/3 of the conference can out recruit us on tradition alone. Nebraska, Michigan, OSU, PSU. Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan State can sell recent history. Illinois has the Zooker who is known for his recruiting and they have a lot more instate talent. NW has been winning under a highly regarded young coach and they also have the instate talent. We basically have an advantage or are equal to Purdue or Indiana. I predict we finish in the bottom 3 in recruiting this year, and I don't blame Kill. We aren't going to move up the chain recruiting and have the wins follow, Kill will have to win games and have the recruiting follow. Brewster was widely regarded as one of the best recruiters in the country, it didn't matter that he was an unknown coach. I never expected Kill to recruit on Brewster's level, I'm hoping his typical class is somewhere between Mason and Brewster, and hopefully his coaching is better then both of them.
 

As Kill's first full class is filling out...

btowngopher said:
The geography excuse flies when you combine it with the wins and losses excuse like I did. Easy to see why we get out recruited by Iowa and Wisconsin. What advantage does Minnesota have in recruiting over the rest of the big10? 1/3 of the conference can out recruit us on tradition alone. Nebraska, Michigan, OSU, PSU. Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan State can sell recent history. Illinois has the Zooker who is known for his recruiting and they have a lot more instate talent. NW has been winning under a highly regarded young coach and they also have the instate talent. We basically have an advantage or are equal to Purdue or Indiana. I predict we finish in the bottom 3 in recruiting this year, and I don't blame Kill. We aren't going to move up the chain recruiting and have the wins follow, Kill will have to win games and have the recruiting follow. Brewster was widely regarded as one of the best recruiters in the country, it didn't matter that he was an unknown coach. I never expected Kill to recruit on Brewster's level, I'm hoping his typical class is somewhere between Mason and Brewster, and hopefully his coaching is better then both of them.
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this seems like a reasonable summation of the realities for 2012.

If Kill is intently focusing on meeting the needs of his system and succeeding with his evaluations of the talent verballing, then coaching has to make a big difference re the "recruiting gap" many here are very worried about relative to our competition.
 

Keep in mind these coaches have seen the DBacks that we have now, some of whom had a number of offers coming out of h.s., and are comparing those they are recruiting (like Murray) against those that are already here (in addition to other DBack recruits they are evaluating). They must see potential in Murray being as good or better than what we already have.

It gets beaten to death, but I always think back to Marion Barber and how, while in h.s., everyone looked at him as a future dback in college, but he wasn't recruited by any big-time schools and didn't get an offer from the Gophs until after the prep bowl his senior year. I'd say he turned out ok as an rb.

I have no reason yet not to trust these guys.
 

Here is my theory, hare-brained as it may be. Kill knows that we aren't going to win the Big Ten in the next 2-3 years, even if we recruited 15 4-stars this year. He has said repeatedly that he is very concerned about the depth on his team. As opposed to waiting out offers that have stiff competition for their services, possibly/probably getting dumped and ending up scrambling for whatever is left, he is taking the bird in the hand over the two in the bush that he may have had to settle for in December or January. When he gets the depth chart to a point where he feels comfortable with (probably after the 2013 cycle), he will then take his newfound depth (and hopefully an 8- or 9-win season in 2012) and shift to a more conventional strategy and be willing to lose out on big-name players, because he knows his depth chart can handle it. If this is indeed how it goes down, it will be painful for us recruitniks in the short-term, but no one will care if Kill is producing bowl teams on the field. If it works, it will be better for the program in the long run to have a depth chart full of players that Kill and Co. really like. If not, well...frankly, we're no worse off than we are right now. I admire Kill for doing things the way he wants, even if a more conventional way would be met with less resistance from the fan base.
 

Murray is not a ready made guy, but the coaches are banking on his upside. They're taking a risk in order to get a bigger return down the road. It's just like investing. You try to find undervalued companies and hope to get returns. You lose money on some, make modest gains with others, but when you hit a couple ten-baggers you're set for life. We need ten-baggers because we can't afford the blue chips.
 

Early recruiting at a school like Minnesota who hasn't had success in a while and has a new staff is basically reserved for instate kids who want to be here, kids they like from camp, and lower ranked kids from out of state who have committed early to reserve a spot.

Let's see who takes officials in the fall before we jump to any conclusions.
 

What is good recruiting?

There has been a lot of discussion on this board that Brewster was known as a good recruiter and Kill isn’t. I think the problem is that we are comparing apples to oranges. Brewster’s ability or focus may have been more on the “sale” side and less on the evaluation side while I believe Kill’s ability or focus is just the opposite of Brewster’s. His is clearly identifying and finding recruits that meet his requirements of speed and athleticism.

This seems to be a great deal of anxiety here when some of these recruit that are not highly ranked or well known, which is understandable. There is also others here who are not quite as nervous. They believe that Jerry Kill is building his program the same way TCU, Boise State, Army, and Navy did. These successful programs al did it without having a lot of highly rated recruits.

Jerry Kill has been pretty clear about his approach to recruiting so it shouldn’t be a shock to any of us as to what he is doing. Eric Murray is a very good example of this. They tried him out as a defensive back and saw something nobody else may have seen. They didn’t look at his stars or his offer list but they did evaluate his talent and speed and he passed so they offered him and he accepted. Hopefully this will turn out to be a great story. On the otherhand, it may not but I trust Jerry Kill more than I trust the recruiters on this board.
 

dpodoll68 said:
Here is my theory, hare-brained as it may be. Kill knows that we aren't going to win the Big Ten in the next 2-3 years, even if we recruited 15 4-stars this year. He has said repeatedly that he is very concerned about the depth on his team. As opposed to waiting out offers that have stiff competition for their services, possibly/probably getting dumped and ending up scrambling for whatever is left, he is taking the bird in the hand over the two in the bush that he may have had to settle for in December or January. When he gets the depth chart to a point where he feels comfortable with (probably after the 2013 cycle), he will then take his newfound depth (and hopefully an 8- or 9-win season in 2012) and shift to a more conventional strategy and be willing to lose out on big-name players, because he knows his depth chart can handle it. If this is indeed how it goes down, it will be painful for us recruitniks in the short-term, but no one will care if Kill is producing bowl teams on the field. If it works, it will be better for the program in the long run to have a depth chart full of players that Kill and Co. really like. If not, well...frankly, we're no worse off than we are right now. I admire Kill for doing things the way he wants, even if a more conventional way would be met with less resistance from the fan base.
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I was thinking a similar thing with the bird in the hand. I also think it gives them a lot more time to focus on setting a solid foundation during his first year of coaching. 4 star players seem to almost always wait until midseason or even late in the season, and this consumes a lot of a coach's energy.

As you said, this way they have players they like and fit their system, although they may not be the highest rated. I'd rather take that than rolling the dice on a group of recruits we will mostly strike out on and be left with some major holes in the depth chart in a few years.
 

I checked out TCU's recruiting classes and not until 2009 did they start having solid classes. So they have been winning with 2-3 star players for a while now. Ill give Kill a few seasons to see what product he puts on the field.
 

dpodoll68

dpodoll68 said:
Here is my theory, hare-brained as it may be. Kill knows that we aren't going to win the Big Ten in the next 2-3 years, even if we recruited 15 4-stars this year. He has said repeatedly that he is very concerned about the depth on his team. As opposed to waiting out offers that have stiff competition for their services, possibly/probably getting dumped and ending up scrambling for whatever is left, he is taking the bird in the hand over the two in the bush that he may have had to settle for in December or January. When he gets the depth chart to a point where he feels comfortable with (probably after the 2013 cycle), he will then take his newfound depth (and hopefully an 8- or 9-win season in 2012) and shift to a more conventional strategy and be willing to lose out on big-name players, because he knows his depth chart can handle it. If this is indeed how it goes down, it will be painful for us recruitniks in the short-term, but no one will care if Kill is producing bowl teams on the field. If it works, it will be better for the program in the long run to have a depth chart full of players that Kill and Co. really like. If not, well...frankly, we're no worse off than we are right now. I admire Kill for doing things the way he wants, even if a more conventional way would be met with less resistance from the fan base.
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There is some logic in what you are saying but I also believe he is trying to change the culture and personality of the team by these selections. Jerry's football philosophy and how he plays the game requires that his players are both fast and athletic. If you check out the speed of our verbals you will find that they are definitely faster than a lot of the players we have now. Hopefully they are also more athletic.

What I find quite reassuring is that when Jerry says the Gophers need to get faster and more athletic, he backs it up with his actions. I think we are all a little worried how this all is going to work out. What we do know is that Jerry Kill is VERY focused on doing the things that will make this team better. He knows what needs to be done. He knows how to do it and he is in the process of doing it now.

I am still a little nervous but I am smiling.
 

Kill may have a sound recruiting philosophy, but the casual fans and the media won't have the patience to wait 3 or 4 years to see if these "less-regarded" recruits pan out.

If the Gophs don't win some games in 2011, and Kill's recruiting class is ranked 10th or 11th in the league (or worse), the second-guessers will be out in force. My gut tells me that, for Kill to survive, he will either have to pull off some upsets this year - or find some way to land some higher-profile recruits.

It's asking for an awfully big leap of faith to accept that Kill and his staff are so good that they can win with recuits that aren't getting any other BCS offers. And the Gopher fan base is pretty low on faith these days - not to mention the Pat Reusses and Jim Souhans of the world, who are waiting to pounce on another new FB coach and rip him to shreds.

Winning games will buy Kill some time. Recruiting big-time kids will buy him some time. But if he doesn't win early, and his recuiting classes are ranked at the bottom of the conference, he may not be around long enough to see if some of these kids pan out.
 

I'm with dpodoll68 and Killjoy. This is going to take awhile. I trust Kill to coach well and if he can generate a "brand," recruiting will improve.

The key for now is for Kill to land in-state guys like McDonald and Pirsig and build up loyalty here.
 

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