Tuesday Recruitin' Is Counting Down The Hours To 2013

from using sledgehammers instead of a wimpy baseball bat.

There is a running list of commits. I’ll have it updated, but it has the stars, heights, weights, and schools of each commit.

Additionally, in tomorrow’s Signing Day Open Thread, we’ll have the full list of 19 guys, updated as they send in their letter.

It’s still a little early for stars, at least for most of the players. Scout and Rivals have only started to give out the top-end star ratings, while 247 has given out a bit more. However, it’s still early in the process.

I suppose anything’s possible until he puts pen to paper, but I highly doubt he reconsiders.

Certainly, not good. The staff did go outand recruit DB’s strongly, got a couple to flip. They weren’t the highest rated on the boards, but they do look like good athletes.

There are plenty of excellent high school players out there who don’t get caught up in the recruiting hype massacre, but who have just as much potential as the kids on top-100 lists (likewise with 5-star kids who may have already peaked as athletes, or who might have other impediments to success at the college level).

Our staff was always good at finding kids with potential, regardless of their star ranking. Whether the new staff can do the same remains to be seen.

is watching the signings on ESPN!

(Hit the post button by mistake. ugh!)

I mean, you can interpret those numbers a lot of different ways. I guess it would be good to keep the top talent from PA in PA, but there are always going to be kids going to other schools out of the state, especially when OSU/UM recruit so heavily in PA.

What I took from those stats is that PSU needs to recruit top talent, and I don’t really care where they are from. It would also be great to get some recruiting base in FL, TX, or Cali. When roughly 410 4/5 star prospects are coming out of those 3 states alone, it would be great to get some talent from there.

Based on our previous success, our goal has to be to dominate recruiting from Maryland through New England, with a healthy presence in Virginia and South Carolina. It’d be nice to get back into Ohio on a regular basis as well, but those kids are being fought over by two other traditional powers who have deeper roots in the state than we do (OSU and Michigan).

There’s no reason that Penn State shouldn’t be the school of choice for great athletes in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and the rest of New England. We need to do well in Pennsylvania (if for nothing else but appearances), but owning Pennsylvania alone won’t get the job done.

Just off the top of my head, we’ve had great success recently with kids out of New York (both City and State), many of which have been under the radar types – kids like Green (who provided excellent depth at tailback), Urschel, Matt Hahn, Mark Rubin, and Ollie Ogbu. Dukes looks like he’ll be a contributor at minimum. Maurice Evans was also from Brooklyn, but was a four star kid who everyone knew.

http://www.blackshoediaries.com/2012/1/28/2754969/oh-hello-pa-de-evan-schwan-commits-to-penn-stat

And, “Schwan Song?” I could’ve guessed that was a Fight On State headline. I’m sure it was tweeted out in ALL CAPS, too.

/curses Artie for discovering truth behind TWO stars debate links above

But it’s not all that complicated. Multiple analyses show that schools which have higher rated recruiting classes over the long haul tend to perform better than those with lower rated classes. In terms of how accurate those rankings are, it’s pretty solid on a multi-year level, noisier on a year-by-year bsis, and ridiculously variable when comparing, say, Antonio Logan El to Deon Butler.

Nevermind that teams are also recruiting for their system, and those things aren’t taken into account. A kid might be two-star in a pro-style offense and a four-star in a spread. A sure-tackling, smart CB could be a two-star player when evaluated in the context of pure man-cover skills, but be an all-conference player in Tom Bradley’s defense.

There are nuances, and everyone recognizes them even if they’re not always articulated. But generally speaking, you should really prefer that your coaching staff brings in higher rated players than your competitors. The data spread over a few years is kind of hard to escape.

I don’t think he’s an option anymore, though. Possible, but kind of unlikely from what I understand.

Recruits, especially the 4 or 5* guys that have legit NFL dreams, want to be in a system that gets them pro-ready, because the NFL scouts prefer those guys. If BO’B can show some on-field success, we’ll start to pull more of those kids in.

Brand new coverage angle will be unveiled.

TEASER!