Dan:
The best point in that piece is that recruiting rankings continue to be in flux until the end of the cycle. However, by the time you get to the end of it, the amount of information is considerable the decisions generally well-informed. Your new recruit probably hasn't had many services, if any, take a hard look. But, if he verbals to M they have to because, first and foremost, they need to rank M in their team rankings. They'll probably see he's a solid 3* or whatever and give him the appropriate ranking. Then maybe he gets an invite to a post-season game or gets a chance to otherwise show out against "elite" competition, and his ranking jumps. For example, Sims and Gemon Green and Cameron McGrone seem like good candidates to bump their rating coming off of whatever post-season game they play in (I assume Sims and McGrone will play for sure, not sure about Green). Oh, and Christian Turner.
Finally, I do think it's appropriate to address one point -- they notion that "Coach thinks he's good enough for the program, so he must be great!" or the like. I think the point here is that you trust your coaches if they're selecting between 3* and even low 4* players. Those players are probably fairly comparable and you can certainly see one coach like one player way more than the services. However, if the coach could have landed a 5* player then don't think for a minute they wouldn't have done it. It's just that those players aren't possibilities.
I'm going to use an OSU example -- and I apologize in advance if it's out of bounds -- but I think it's contextual and fair. OSU took Master Teague at RB. He's a higher 3* player. The reason they took him was that they couldn't get Zamir White or Lorenzo Lingard. However, they also specifically took him over other higher rated kids in his range (e.g., Taivon Thomas is the 17th RB and Teague is the 21st). So, it wasn't like they "chose" Teague over the superstars in the class; but they did "chose" Teague over the 2nd-ish tier kids in the class.
IMO, that's a more nuanced understanding of taking kids that are in the mid-to-high 3* range.
The best point in that piece is that recruiting rankings continue to be in flux until the end of the cycle. However, by the time you get to the end of it, the amount of information is considerable the decisions generally well-informed. Your new recruit probably hasn't had many services, if any, take a hard look. But, if he verbals to M they have to because, first and foremost, they need to rank M in their team rankings. They'll probably see he's a solid 3* or whatever and give him the appropriate ranking. Then maybe he gets an invite to a post-season game or gets a chance to otherwise show out against "elite" competition, and his ranking jumps. For example, Sims and Gemon Green and Cameron McGrone seem like good candidates to bump their rating coming off of whatever post-season game they play in (I assume Sims and McGrone will play for sure, not sure about Green). Oh, and Christian Turner.
Finally, I do think it's appropriate to address one point -- they notion that "Coach thinks he's good enough for the program, so he must be great!" or the like. I think the point here is that you trust your coaches if they're selecting between 3* and even low 4* players. Those players are probably fairly comparable and you can certainly see one coach like one player way more than the services. However, if the coach could have landed a 5* player then don't think for a minute they wouldn't have done it. It's just that those players aren't possibilities.
I'm going to use an OSU example -- and I apologize in advance if it's out of bounds -- but I think it's contextual and fair. OSU took Master Teague at RB. He's a higher 3* player. The reason they took him was that they couldn't get Zamir White or Lorenzo Lingard. However, they also specifically took him over other higher rated kids in his range (e.g., Taivon Thomas is the 17th RB and Teague is the 21st). So, it wasn't like they "chose" Teague over the superstars in the class; but they did "chose" Teague over the 2nd-ish tier kids in the class.
IMO, that's a more nuanced understanding of taking kids that are in the mid-to-high 3* range.
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