Official 2022 Gophers Football Recruiting Thread: Links, Tweets, Videos, Rumors

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MNVCGUY said:
See but again....you are using 2021 information to say a decision in 2019 was wrong. Wiley had many power 5 offers from all over the country, Hull had barely any and they came in late in the process.

Today....yep 100% Hull is a better power 5 running back than Wiley. But in 2019 the people recruiting the two of them clearly felt Wiley was going to be the better player.
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I guess I don't know any other way to judge player evaluation than to analyze what the player actually becomes. How would you evaluate that we did a good job spotting Mafe? Howden? I would give the staff credit for spotting those players but that credit is based on my 2021 information about them.

I think we generally agree. I don't blame our staff for missing because it seemed like most people would have missed on Hull (if they had the option for Wiley). Other coaching staffs and recruiting services missed as well. I would say the same thing about Trey Lance. We missed on him - - so did everyone else. Our evaluation of him was wrong.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Sure, but then you'll never have hits or misses. Who knows if Mafe was a good recruit because he might have been crappy elsewhere.
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That's true, some guys are only productive because they found the right fit and opportunity. That's kind of what I'm saying with Wiley. We are comparing a 45 carry career to like 260 carry career.
 

PoockItInfor6 said:
Hull probably would have transferred out after getting passed by Bucky and Ky…
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You don't think Hull would have gotten playing time last year?

Even if you actually believe that (you shouldn't), why would you not want as much talent as possible? Do we really want to recruit lesser players so player don't transfer out?
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
You don't think Hull would have gotten playing time last year?

Even if you actually believe that (you shouldn't), why would you not want as much talent as possible? Do we really want to recruit lesser players so player don't transfer out?
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Mo led the conference in rushing, so unlikely Hull would have played much. RB is a numbers thing and you can't bring in too many each year. You have to PWO some and that leaved the opportunity they will go elsewhere. Hull at NW has 46 carries in 2019, 25 in 2020, and 196 this year for a terrible team. NW didn't have him as top back until this year.
 


Bob_Loblaw said:
Yeah, I don't blame Burns or anyone. They are clearly good at evaluating players and even people who are really good at that will have misses.

I don't really count Williamson because there is no way anyone could have known he would have had injuries, but I do think it's pretty clear that Hull is a better football player than Wiley. IMO, we missed on him and that's 100% ok. It happens. It'll happen every year. It'll happen to the very best staffs in the country.
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I disagree. He would not be getting the minutes here he gets at Northwestern so he would likely be putting up mediocre numbers. He may be a better back than Wiley, but outside of a year like last year where 45 RBs go down he was never going to be the #1 or #2.

Misses are guys who are better than what you put out there. Hull is not better than our Top 4 RBs.
 
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Dave H said:
I disagree. He would not be getting the minutes here he gets at Northwestern so he would likely be putting up mediocre numbers. He may be a better back than Wiley, but outside of a year like last year where 45 RBs go down he was never going to be the #1 or #2.

Misses are guys who are better than what you put out there. Hull is not better than our Top 4 RBs.
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Maybe mediocre numbers as far as totals, but in his first two years at NW getting smaller amounts of carries, he averaged 6.2 and 8.4 YPC. This year, he became the lead guy, and averaged 5.1, which was higher than any of our running backs besides Mo, and our guys got the advantage of playing behind a great O-Line.

Love the guys we've got, but I think he would have been a great addition to the group.
 

MaxyJR1 said:
Mo led the conference in rushing, so unlikely Hull would have played much. RB is a numbers thing and you can't bring in too many each year. You have to PWO some and that leaved the opportunity they will go elsewhere. Hull at NW has 46 carries in 2019, 25 in 2020, and 196 this year for a terrible team. NW didn't have him as top back until this year.
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He is the same year as Trey Potts. It's not like it took him forever to see the field. On a terrible NW team, he put up big numbers. It's not like you often have "empty" rushing stats.

As far as Mo leading the conference in rushing, sure, but then he got hurt.

We would have been in better shape if we had Hull instead of Wiley or Williams.
 

Good Lord . . . Tomorrow can’t come soon enough!!! We’ve made progress from one key observation: multiple posts about a “miss” on Evan Hull vs Cam Wiley for a 4th or 5th RB spot?!? I remember the dark years when we were talking up some “2 star” signings (settling’s?). Every school faces the “miss” scenarios. Every. It’s only a talking point at all, because we had a 1-in-50 year event of the top 3 rbs go down.
 



Bob_Loblaw said:
He is the same year as Trey Potts. It's not like it took him forever to see the field. On a terrible NW team, he put up big numbers. It's not like you often have "empty" rushing stats.

As far as Mo leading the conference in rushing, sure, but then he got hurt.

We would have been in better shape if we had Hull instead of Wiley or Williams.
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Let me add to this, along with saying Bob; you're doing a better job making the argument for me that he 'was a miss', no matter how you look at it, than I could do myself. Must be the lawyer in you.

Hull had the numbers he had this year on a team that had zero passing game, not a very good O Line and generally didn't have the ball as much as their opponents (don't know that for sure, but they certainly didn't against the Gophers!). Yet he still had great numbers!!

Listen, I love the RB's we have and I'm not saying he should be our RB and therefore the coaches blew it by not bringing him in BUT frankly how can you say he wasn't a miss when our staff had better access to him and yet didn't offer him and look at what he's doing. Again, Trey Lance comes to mind and I don't think we can say they weren't misses.

All I'm saying here is 'we could have done better' by recognizing their (Hull in this debate) potential and since we didn't, me missed, that's all. Not hard to admit, happens to all staffs~
 

Dave H said:
I disagree. He would not be getting the minutes here he gets at Northwestern so he would likely be putting up mediocre numbers. He may be a better back than Wiley, but outside of a year like last year where 45 RBs go down he was never going to be the #1 or #2.

Misses are guys who are better than what you put out there. Hull is not better than our Top 4 RBs.
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Without question, he is better than Williams or Wiley. Wiley is his same year, adding Wiley instead of him was a miss. You really can't dance around it. As far as him being worse than Potts, Ky, and Bucky. . . possibly. He put up better numbers (YPC) and receptions than Bucky. I'd guess if we had Hull instead of Wiley, Bucky would have redshirted this last year.

Hull absolutely would have played a lot for us last year. He would have been out there. He'd certainly get playing time this coming year.

A "miss" is someone who you could have had who is better than someone who chose instead. The miss hurts less because we have other good players, but it's a miss nonetheless.
 

DanvilleGopher said:
Let me add to this, along with saying Bob; you're doing a better job making the argument for me that he 'was a miss', no matter how you look at it, than I could do myself. Must be the lawyer in you.

Hull had the numbers he had this year on a team that had zero passing game, not a very good O Line and generally didn't have the ball as much as their opponents (don't know that for sure, but they certainly didn't against the Gophers!). Yet he still had great numbers!!

Listen, I love the RB's we have and I'm not saying he should be our RB and therefore the coaches blew it by not bringing him in BUT frankly how can you say he wasn't a miss when our staff had better access to him and yet didn't offer him and look at what he's doing. Again, Trey Lance comes to mind and I don't think we can say they weren't misses.

All I'm saying here is 'we could have done better' by recognizing their (Hull in this debate) potential and since we didn't, me missed, that's all. Not hard to admit, happens to all staffs~
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I still don't think it is fair to say we could have done better or should have recognized that Hull was going to turn out to be a good player. He got very little power 5 interest and we had 2-3 RB already in the class that were viewed as better prospects.

Trey Lance's name has come up a few times as well....that is a whole different story as EVERYONE missed on him as there was nothing to say he was capable of being the QB he became.

There is so much guesswork in recruiting high school players that playing the second guessing game is pointless. I doubt there was a ton of complaining around here when Hull ended up going to Northwestern.

All coaches can do is use the info at hand to make the best guess they can about how a player is going to develop over time. They will be right on a lot of guys and they will be wrong on a lot of guys. Hindsight being 20/20 in every class I am sure there are guys they wish they had gone after and others they wish they hadn't. But at the time they felt they were doing the right thing.
 

spermophilus said:
Good Lord . . . Tomorrow can’t come soon enough!!! We’ve made progress from one key observation: multiple posts about a “miss” on Evan Hull vs Cam Wiley for a 4th or 5th RB spot?!? I remember the dark years when we were talking up some “2 star” signings (settling’s?). Every school faces the “miss” scenarios. Every. It’s only a talking point at all, because we had a 1-in-50 year event of the top 3 rbs go down.
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It had to be brutal reading through 7 tangentially-related football posts about local recruiting and if recruiting strategy changes after the transfer portal.

If you think Evan Hull would be the 4th or 5th best RB on this team, we can agree to disagree.
He got more run in 2020 than Potts did and he played on a way better team.
He ran for 1000 yards this year (5.1 YPC) on a team without anywhere near the kind of line we have.

As to the 1-50 scenario, you really think that? RB is the position with the most injuries, by far, and we ran the ball 550 times last year.
In 2018, our 4th string RB heading into the year was Bryce Williams, he had 117 carries and 500 yards.
In 2019, we only played three RB's significantly. But we were close to having to play a 4th quite a bit.
In 2020, we only played 1 RB really, but the backup was a guy named Cam Wiley. Maybe Mo would have gotten more time off if it Hull instead of Wiley?
In 2021, our 4th string RB heading into the year was probably Ky Thomas, he had 145 carries and 700+ yards.

So yeah, it looks like it's more like a 1-2 scenario where the 4th string RB really matters.
 



MNVCGUY said:
I still don't think it is fair to say we could have done better or should have recognized that Hull was going to turn out to be a good player. He got very little power 5 interest and we had 2-3 RB already in the class that were viewed as better prospects.

Trey Lance's name has come up a few times as well....that is a whole different story as EVERYONE missed on him as there was nothing to say he was capable of being the QB he became.

There is so much guesswork in recruiting high school players that playing the second guessing game is pointless. I doubt there was a ton of complaining around here when Hull ended up going to Northwestern.

All coaches can do is use the info at hand to make the best guess they can about how a player is going to develop over time. They will be right on a lot of guys and they will be wrong on a lot of guys. Hindsight being 20/20 in every class I am sure there are guys they wish they had gone after and others they wish they hadn't. But at the time they felt they were doing the right thing.
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Isn't the bold the exact definition of a "miss"?

I agree with your statement on Lance, everyone did miss on him (for precisely the reason bolded in your first paragraph). It isn't a dig on our staff to say it was a miss on Hull or Lance. Its' an inexact science and even the best evaluators are wrong sometimes.

I agree that all the coaches can do is go off of the information that they had. I'm not like blasting the staff for missing on Hull, I'm just admitting that it's a miss. Every staff has misses every single year. I'm sure that they'll tell you that. I agree with your last paragraph 100%, but I don't think that means misses aren't misses.

Our staff hits on way more than the miss, especially in the RB room. This isn't a criticism of our staff. In the context of 2022 recruiting, if our Johnson goes to Nebraska and is a good player and would have been productive here, it is a miss by our staff in not offering.

I like Johnson, I'd probably offer him if I were Kenny Burns/PJ. But I also acknowledge they'd do a much better job than I would at evaluating talent. But I was right on Hull. He was a guy that just looked really good in HS. There were plenty of people clamoring for him on here (I was one of them), so it's that it was impossible for anyone to say he should have been offered.
 
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Bob_Loblaw said:
He is the same year as Trey Potts. It's not like it took him forever to see the field. On a terrible NW team, he put up big numbers. It's not like you often have "empty" rushing stats.

As far as Mo leading the conference in rushing, sure, but then he got hurt.

We would have been in better shape if we had Hull instead of Wiley or Williams.
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I don't disagree and we may not have Bucky or Ky if we have Hull. I like the way Hull plays, but someone has to get rushing yards, it's like someone has to lead your basketball team in scoring.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I still don't think it is fair to say we could have done better or should have recognized that Hull was going to turn out to be a good player. He got very little power 5 interest and we had 2-3 RB already in the class that were viewed as better prospects.

Trey Lance's name has come up a few times as well....that is a whole different story as EVERYONE missed on him as there was nothing to say he was capable of being the QB he became.

There is so much guesswork in recruiting high school players that playing the second guessing game is pointless. I doubt there was a ton of complaining around here when Hull ended up going to Northwestern.

All coaches can do is use the info at hand to make the best guess they can about how a player is going to develop over time. They will be right on a lot of guys and they will be wrong on a lot of guys. Hindsight being 20/20 in every class I am sure there are guys they wish they had gone after and others they wish they hadn't. But at the time they felt they were doing the right thing.
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Unfortunately I'll prolong this fruitless debate (again, I love who we have in our stable of RB's) as I evidently see this different than many folks on here, which is great as that is one of the reasons we're on this board.

Let's look at Trey Lance and Evan Hull. To say that everyone missed to me is not a viable argument. These guys are right here in front of us (in-state recruits) and so many people on this board clammer for locals to be given scholarships AND Fleck himself has stated we must do a better job of closing the borders and keeping the players home who can make a difference. So based on that right there, we should be closer to these recruits than other staffs. On top of that; let's take recruiting this year for example. I mentioned months ago, I was not overly impressed with our current list of players who have accepted scholarships and the reason why was due to their rating and I'm pretty sure it was you who called me a star chaser. Which is fine but that's all we have to compare all players. I realize it's not the end all of these guys and there is much more to the player with culture and fit etc.

At the same time so many people on here believe that our staff does such a fantastic job finding the jewels in these classes that weren't rated that high and then 'coaches them up'. I agree for the most part but in this case, why then did we miss these 'lower' ranked guys? Trey wanted to play QB so that would be his argument since PJ was bringing in Morgan. Evan; sorry, to me it's still a miss and yes, we could have done better. We brought in other running backs in that class and Wiley was one of them. Do we think he's better than Wiley? I stated (to my dad of course cause who else would I tell) I thought Wiley would never make it with his running style, and that played out and yes, I think I should be on the Gophers staff, for those of you thinking that way based on what I typed.

Good debate, but still a miss!! IMHO
 
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skyman31 said:
Maybe mediocre numbers as far as totals, but in his first two years at NW getting smaller amounts of carries, he averaged 6.2 and 8.4 YPC. This year, he became the lead guy, and averaged 5.1, which was higher than any of our running backs besides Mo, and our guys got the advantage of playing behind a great O-Line.

Love the guys we've got, but I think he would have been a great addition to the group.
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I can honestly say I wouldn't trade Hull for any of them. That isn't a slight on Hull at all, it is a compliment to our backs. To each their own though :)
 

MNVCGUY said:
I still don't think it is fair to say we could have done better or should have recognized that Hull was going to turn out to be a good player. He got very little power 5 interest and we had 2-3 RB already in the class that were viewed as better prospects.

Trey Lance's name has come up a few times as well....that is a whole different story as EVERYONE missed on him as there was nothing to say he was capable of being the QB he became.

There is so much guesswork in recruiting high school players that playing the second guessing game is pointless. I doubt there was a ton of complaining around here when Hull ended up going to Northwestern.

All coaches can do is use the info at hand to make the best guess they can about how a player is going to develop over time. They will be right on a lot of guys and they will be wrong on a lot of guys. Hindsight being 20/20 in every class I am sure there are guys they wish they had gone after and others they wish they hadn't. But at the time they felt they were doing the right thing.
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There are two different ways to miss in recruiting:

1. Not getting commitments from the players you want.
2. Incorrectly evaluating a player’s talent.

Hull is a miss of the second kind. Lucky for us, we’ve done a great job of getting other talented running backs, so it doesn’t hurt as much, and overall the coaching staff is doing a great job recruiting running backs.
 

Bob_Loblaw said:
Without question, he is better than Williams or Wiley. Wiley is his same year, adding Wiley instead of him was a miss. You really can't dance around it. As far as him being worse than Potts, Ky, and Bucky. . . possibly. He put up better numbers (YPC) and receptions than Bucky. I'd guess if we had Hull instead of Wiley, Bucky would have redshirted this last year.

Hull absolutely would have played a lot for us last year. He would have been out there. He'd certainly get playing time this coming year.

A "miss" is someone who you could have had who is better than someone who chose instead. The miss hurts less because we have other good players, but it's a miss nonetheless.
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I guess we just define things differently. Not a big deal he is where he is supposed to be and we seem to be just fine with who we have. Good problems to have :)
 




MaxyJR1 said:
I don't disagree and we may not have Bucky or Ky if we have Hull. I like the way Hull plays, but someone has to get rushing yards, it's like someone has to lead your basketball team in scoring.
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I think this is being over looked. Hull got a third of his yards against Ohio and Indiana St this year. Look at him in B1G play this year. He was very mediocre minus a few long runs. In 5 of 9 conference games he averaged less than 4 ypc. We are comparing him to guys that didn't even get to play and guys that got injured.
 

DanvilleGopher said:
Unfortunately I'll prolong this fruitless debate (again, I love who we have in our stable of RB's) as I evidently see this different than many folks on here, which is great as that is one of the reasons we're on this board.

Let's look at Trey Lance and Evan Hull. To say that everyone missed to me is not a viable argument. These guys are right here in front of us (in-state recruits) and so many people on this board clammer for locals to be given scholarships AND Fleck himself has stated we must do a better job of closing the borders and keeping the players home who can make a difference. So based on that right there, we should be closer to these recruits than other staffs. On top of that; let's take recruiting this year for example. I mentioned months ago, I was not overly impressed with our current list of players who have accepted scholarships and the reason why was due to their rating and I'm pretty sure it was you who called me a star chaser. Which is fine but that's all we have to compare all players. I realize it's not the end all of these guys and there is much more to the player with culture and fit etc.

At the same time so many people on here believe that our staff does such a fantastic job finding the jewels in these classes that weren't rated that high and then 'coaches them up'. I agree for the most part but in this case, why then did we miss these 'lower' ranked guys? Trey wanted to play QB so that would be his argument since PJ was bringing in Morgan. Evan; sorry, to me it's still a miss and yes, we could have done better. We brought in other running backs in that class and Wiley was one of them. Do we think he's better than Wiley? I stated (to my dad of course cause who else would I tell) I thought Wiley would never make it with his running style, and that played out and yes, I think I should be on the Gophers staff, for those of you thinking that way based on what I typed.

Good debate, but still a miss!! IMHO
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I think we are all pretty much on the same page just choosing to define things a little differently.

The one thing I will say is closing the boarders doesn't refer to guys like Hull or Lance. Closing the boarders refers to making sure the guys you want don't leave.
 

MNVCGUY said:
I think we are all pretty much on the same page just choosing to define things a little differently.

The one thing I will say is closing the boarders doesn't refer to guys like Hull or Lance. Closing the boarders refers to making sure the guys you want don't leave.
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Yeah I imagine there are multiple misses in state every year for any coach not named Tommyboy. Keeping that number low, being accurate evaluating the kids you do take, and not letting the kids get away that you wanted are all important.
 


skyman31 said:
Apologies if this was posted elsewhere, but looks like the Knuth visit to K State isn’t going to materialize into anything more:

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We're not sure yet, maybe this was all a stealth recruiting trip. K-State had five other 'cruits on campus that weekend. Let's see if he talked one of 'em into coming to the winning side....
 

If we can land Vega and Holmes this will be a very nice well rounded class that hits pretty much every position.
 

PhillyGopher said:
Who cares about tabulating hits or misses? I certainly don't
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I'm not like keeping a running ledger but discussing hits and misses during recruiting seems to be a pretty common discussion when evaluating recruiting classes.
 


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