Brent Wilkerson Commits To Penn State

the 2011 recruiting class turned out just fine. Either way:
1) Caring is creepy and
2) Neither us, the “we stare at teenage boys for a living” recruiting gurus, or the coaches will know for at least 2 years

Considering how the class of 2011 started, we ended up WELL above what the expectation was throughout the year. The staff may not have gotten the top targets in the nation, but it was a very well rounded class with focuses on positions of need. Stars and team rankings be damned, the staff pulled through in a year we thought was going to be an absolute disaster.

Could they have gone stronger early? Sure. But we finished strong, and got quality recruits who all, from what I remember, sound like they’ve got the Penn State attitude. I’m more than happy with how the 2011 class ended up considering Joe being sick all summer, and not having four commits until the season started.

I feel like people looked at where the class stood around August of last year, remembered where 2010’s class stood in August ‘09, and just wrote the whole thing off and didn’t pay it any mind. They just said, “Well, it sucks now, so it’s going to suck in 5 months!” and ignored what happened the rest of the way.

Or maybe they happened to mention the possibility of it and he really took the opportunity to play early to heart. I thought it was a little weird too, but the coaching staff knows waht they’re doing, they’ve been doing it for years, blah and yada and et cetera and so on.

and was like…“ok, good DE get…” then watched somemore and thought…“ok, good TE get…”

He’s big, seems strong (weighing in on the ‘man amongst boys’ evolution), and seems to be avg speed for a TE.

Yes – we have some pretty good young talent @ TE now; if he performs well as a DE, I’d play him there. If for certain offensive sets his skills are near equal to our other TE’s, I’d make sure he gets some practice reps here as well. You’d think he could hold his own on goal-line blocking at the minimum.

You’re talking about the same staff that at what seemed like the 11th hour, pulled together a class that started with us being almost dead last in the B1G to the top four.

And to answer your question, if the coaches had to face as few schollies as they were able to give out last year, every year, then yes I would be fine with the way they handled it. They had to be both selective, and meet their needs, and they accomplished both (quite well IMHO). Did we miss out on the bigger names? Some of them, but it wasn’t the end of the program as we know it that the message boards were proclaiming it to be. But that’s not the way it works: you get big classes, and you get small classes. You do the best with what you have available, and the fact that the staff was able to do what they did with such a small class last year speaks volumes to their tenacity and refusal to just give up, even when the chips are running out.