Reusse on Fleck's recruiting: "His recruiting is OK so far."

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Some guy said:
Yeah that kind of is close.
If both seasons make the Rose bowl I’d rather have the bowl win.

But in a vacuum 11-1 is much more likely to make a major bowl than 10-2. 11-1 much more likely to make it to Indianapolis than 10-2
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GOT YOU!

Just kidding, in reality to make the rose bowl we'd be talking about 12-2.
 

bottlebass said:
GOT YOU!

Just kidding, in reality to make the rose bowl we'd be talking about 12-2.
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Not necessarily.

If the gophers are the second ranked team in the big ten but the big ten champ goes to a playoff game in a year where the Rose doesn’t host a playoff game. The second ranked team would go to rose
 

Some guy said:
Not necessarily.

If the gophers are the second ranked team in the big ten but the big ten champ goes to a playoff game in a year where the Rose doesn’t host a playoff game. The second ranked team would go to rose
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And we'd likely be in the B1G championship. Which means we would have 13 games before the bowl game.
 






Face The Facts said:
I'd agree with that.

I have often criticized Claey's 9* win season and outlined the level of competition we beat that year.
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This is hollow rationale given the number of 8 (or more) win regular seasons Gophs have had in the past 50 years (six), or 9 (or more) win seasons in the past 50 years (two). In order to have those win totals, a winning conference record is needed as well. That has happened eight times in the last 50 years.

Regardless of one's perception of the level of competition, it's pretty rare for Gophs, period.
 







bottlebass said:
I'm not exactly known as a nice guy.
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I can't imagine why that would be the case. But, hey; nice guys finish last.

To recap: you pointed to that there's a history behind the asterisk for 9* wins. You told me I didn't understand that history. When I asked you to explain it, you blew me off.

End of story as far as I'm concerned.
 



#2Gopher said:
Reusse was bored so he takes the time to rile the readers. Shocked that he is still married. Can't imagine any woman wanting to have sex with this slob.
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Wait! People still have sex after they're married?
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
+1

If we are going to bash them for something it should be the 3 star rating they gave a non existent player. No one should ever cite Rivals as evidence of the quality of a recruit again, because we have no way of knowing who got the same "evaluation" as the fake player they rated.
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I struggle with this theory. Does one bad cop make all policemen bad? Rivals, like all the other services employ regional staff to evaluate. Whoever at Rivals handled the area where this "recruit" came out of obviously took the short-cut to doing his job. They very well could be an excellent evaluator but just got lazy and caught. Anyway, from my experience it comes down to the person doing the evaluation and not the "service" per se. Rivals is sometimes more accurate in their ratings and sometimes 247 is. ESPN has their own issues and I don't trust anything outside of their top 5 of each position group as a whole.
 

RememberMurray said:
The Gophers didn't play Michigan in 2016.
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Whoops wrong season.

The one that ruined the next season was completely embarrassing ourselves by blowing a lead against penn State while sending a hitman to unsuccessfully cheap shot the penn State kicker.

If you are going to send a goon after a kicker, make sure your goon wins decisively
 

Some guy said:
Whoops wrong season.

The one that ruined the next season was completely embarrassing ourselves by blowing a lead against penn State while sending a hitman to unsuccessfully cheap shot the penn State kicker.

If you are going to send a goon after a kicker, make sure your goon wins decisively
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That's... a unique and interesting re-telling of how that all played out.
 

RememberMurray said:
That's... a unique and interesting re-telling of how that all played out.
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What do you mean?

You think the gopher guy who got ejected wasn’t instructed to head hunt the kicker?

You don’t think the gophers lost a game they should have won given the situation and the expectation to compete in the west?


Granted it was early in the season and they could’ve recovered. In my mind that game changed them from a contender and a 10 win type of team to a team that’d be second tier like they finished.
Followed it up by scoring 7 points with a senior quarterback against Iowa the next week.
 

Some guy said:
What do you mean?

You think the gopher guy who got ejected wasn’t instructed to head hunt the kicker?

You don’t think the gophers lost a game they should have won given the situation and the expectation to compete in the west?


Granted it was early in the season and they could’ve recovered. In my mind that game changed them from a contender and a 10 win type of team to a team that’d be second tier like they finished.
Followed it up by scoring 7 points with a senior quarterback against Iowa the next week.
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Several things.

1. I would say Waters likely took it upon himself to block the kicker in the way he did, doubt the staff instructed him to do that.

2. How was it a cheap shot? Just because Waters completely laid him out doesn't mean it was dirty. Julius wasn't a defenseless player at all. Waters just got the best of him. If a player on kick return did that to any other player, it would be celebrated.

3. Aside from the fact that he got ejected, it was a successful block, not unsuccessful.

 

Some guy said:
Whoops wrong season.

The one that ruined the next season was completely embarrassing ourselves by blowing a lead against penn State while sending a hitman to unsuccessfully cheap shot the penn State kicker.

If you are going to send a goon after a kicker, make sure your goon wins decisively
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That was a solid hit on a kicker that made himself a tackler quite often that season (see the second link below). Also the kicker took a dive like a soccer player to draw the penalty.

[video]http://www.espn.com/video/clip?id=17687526[/video]
[video]http://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/17687353[/video]
 

Apparently you don’t think popping a kicker after the play is over is a cheap shot.

That’s fine.
2/3 plays in that video are really bad cheap shots because they lay out the kicker after the play is over
 

Some guy said:
Apparently you don’t think popping a kicker after the play is over is a cheap shot.

That’s fine.
2/3 plays in that video are really bad cheap shots because they lay out the kicker after the play is over
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That's a cheap shot in soccer and basketball, not football or hockey.
 

Word said:
That's a cheap shot in soccer and basketball, not football or hockey.
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We are going to have to agree to disagree.
You can’t convince me hitting a guy after the play who is furthest from the play isn’t a cheap shot.
 

Some guy said:
Apparently you don’t think popping a kicker after the play is over is a cheap shot.

That’s fine.
2/3 plays in that video are really bad cheap shots because they lay out the kicker after the play is over
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How do you know the play was over?
 

die hard gopher said:
How do you know the play was over?
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Because the referee ejected him for cheap shotting him after the play.

If the play was still happening it would be pretty easy for you to post some proof.
If you post that I will completely change my position.
 

die hard gopher said:
How do you know the play was over?
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I don't think it was. You can still see the other Penn State players pursuing in the background nor can you hear the whistle blow.

The refs blew that call.
 
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Some guy said:
Because the referee ejected him for cheap shotting him after the play.

If the play was still happening it would be pretty easy for you to post some proof.
If you post that I will completely change my position.
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For all we know, the refs could have thrown the flag because they thought it was targeting while the play was still going. You have no idea if the play ended.
 

Some guy said:
What do you mean?

You think the gopher guy who got ejected wasn’t instructed to head hunt the kicker?

You don’t think the gophers lost a game they should have won given the situation and the expectation to compete in the west?


Granted it was early in the season and they could’ve recovered. In my mind that game changed them from a contender and a 10 win type of team to a team that’d be second tier like they finished.
Followed it up by scoring 7 points with a senior quarterback against Iowa the next week.
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I'll take them one at a time:

1) I have no reason to think the player was instructed to "head hunt". If you have some evidence that he was, and you present it, I could be persuaded. But I've never seen any. Also, that Penn State kicker was perfectly okay with having built a bit of a rep for himself as a guy who was a "real football player", and not afraid to get physical. He was a-okay with dishing it out; therefore, he should be expecting other players to reply in kind.

2) The Gophers did compete in the West that season, to my way of thinking.

3) As far as being "a game they should have won", I don't see it. Playing Penn State in Happy Valley is a tough assignment most any season. And Penn State ended up Big Ten Champions that particular year, if I recall. Since when is it an expectation that any Gopher team will beat the Big Ten Champs in their own stadium? I mean, I love the high expectations, but...that's really high.

4) You're absolutely right about the 10 wins... if they had won that game, they would have had exactly 10 wins.

So in your scoring, 9 wins is "second tier" and 10 wins would have been... what? I guess "first tier."

All in all, I was disappointed they lost, but proud and encouraged by the way they competed against the eventual champs. A moral victory in some ways.

I know, I know... there is no such thing as a moral victory. Just ask a sports expert, like Barreiro.
 

Joey Julius wanted to be a football player. He wanted to be more than just a kicker, and be involved in the play. He got what he wanted, and those dives that he took would make any soccer player proud.
 

magpie said:
Every recruiting class should be better than the previous. Kids are better equipped and trained than yester-years. The point is that even with a notable increase in perceived talent (star rankings, yada yada), we still sit 10th out of 14 schools in the conference. That is below average for the conference, but above average for the country. I think 'okay' is a reasonable assessment.
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A quick look at the data according to 247, which is flawed, but one could argue consistently flawed, tells a story, but not the one we hear so much about.

One thing that does show up is that if you are considered a good recruiter by the press (Fleck, Brewster) you're average ratings are higher than the coaches who are not good recruiters (Kill, Claeys).

Fleck has averaged 9.67th best in the Big ten in the recruiting rankings. That's 30th Percentile in the conference. I would argue that is less than OK.

His index to the average class from 2007 - 2019 is 104. That is a modest improvement relative to the rest of the Big Ten (note 247 includes Maryland and Rutgers in the Big Ten before 2014, and I left them in for consistency in the number). In fairness, the ridiculous over inflation of Brewster's recruits skews that, Fleck's index to the average should be higher, but it does not explain away why "the players have gotten better", but our ranking, relative to our peer institutions has shown only modest growth.

Flecks' average recruit ranking is .8509 which is the highest of the coaches in these time periods. It represents an Index of 102 to the average of all of the coaches.

Recruiting reporting, and the tactics schools use in recruiting have changed dramatically in the last few years, so not sure how valuable the data analysis is, but what we see, is that the Gophers have consistently been at the back of the pack in recruiting. we've finished in the top half of the conference twice in the past 13 years. Once with Brewster, once with Fleck.

One other fun fact in the data. Only Jerry Kill's recruiting, in terms of average player rank, improved every single year, but still managed only a 12.4 average finish in the conference.
 

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