....with recruits/commits wrapping up their visits and getting ready to head home are there any whispers, rumours, tweets, announcements, blogs, secret emails, smoke signals, wire taps, hat ceremonies, flying banners, vines or Pinterest? Always look forward to meeting the new Sooners :surprise: ss
Sorry, been offline all weekend. Had to tailgate prep, then watch my Broncos win the AFC I'll be back on tomorrow (Monday), and I'll write up a wrap up (see what I did there?).
Kendall Randolph has announced that OU is no longer apart of his recruiting process on twitter. I guess OU just could not squeeze him into the equation. That is most unfortunate and will most likely put gas on the ratings flame since we took a 3* Thomas over a 4* Randolph.
That doesn't bother me. What concerns me is the kids we've got committed that our main competition for was North Texas or New Mexico and the like.
So this is something that I wanted to bring up as a separate topic, but here is as good of a place as any. What constitutes "Competition". Are we talking about offers? Are we talking about Official Visits? The reason that I ask is that most recruits do not commit to a school where they didn't take an official visit unless it is the home town school (Gerald McCoy for example). The second problem is that there are very few schools that can actually steal our commits away from us (historically aTm has been the best at less than .4 per year). What this means is that once we identify a guy we want, it is a long battle uphill for any other school to actually land them. Further compounding the problem for schools like Texas and aTm is their early recruiting. They just do not have the available scholarships to go after guys like that late in the process. Now, just some interesting items: For example, here is a list of our All Conference players that took official visits to places we might deem unworthy. CJ Ah You - Boise State Jeremy Beal - Duke Quinton Carter - Fresno State/UNLV Frank Alexander - Tulane 74% of our recruits take only 1 official visit (to us). Those guys wash out at a 28% rate and declare early at a 2% rate. The other 26% take multiple officials. These guys wash out at a 20% rate and declare early at a 9% rate. Obviously EEs are better than transfers, but 30% of either group fail to complete college. Given that our best teams under Stoops have been very RS JR/RS SR heavy, this sucks donkey balls either way you slice it.
I'm not concerned if kids are taking visits to a place we might deem unworthy; there could be any number of reasons a kid might visit a school like that. My concern is taking kids that besides OU, they don't have ANY offers that I would deem worthy. I fully admit it is possible that our coaches have seen something in the kid that no other big-time program saw, or that maybe the kid fits a particular role on our team that gives them greater value to us than they'd have to someone else. I also get that in some cases the kid may "bloom" late and some programs are either out of schollies, or they've filled the position for that player. What concerns me is when NO OTHER big-time program has interest in a kid that we take. And here I will allow it is possible that if a kid commits to us that may prevent some other programs from even offering. Finally...After the Sugar Bowl I'm a believer again. I'm going to trust that if we take a kid, whether he be 5-star or 2-star there's a good reason for it. (Not that this will keep me from debating the issue on here)
Heh. One of the things that became apparent when I was pulling the data is that our staff would prefer to have other players than the ones they are landing. This is because the offers jumped from 80ish when we were landing "good" classes to 175 the last several years. The problem I'm personally having is that those "good" classes weren't very "good" on the field whereas these "settled" classes have produced some players that can play. History under Stoops shows that the key foundation of his really good teams are older players (4th/5th year in the system with a heavy emphasis on redshirts). This trend runs contrary to what you see out of higher ranked players who leave before 4 years at a very high clip (either via early entrant or transfer). If he can somehow reconcile these 2 facts you'll be able to look down your nose at 'Bama in the not to distant future.
I like that stat - I think it tells a lot. And no doubt some of our "good" classes haven't turned out very good! The class with Jermie Calhoun, Stephen Good, RJ Washington, just to see it on paper was awesome! And I know there where other highly rated guys in that same class. So....thus my hope that instead of "chasing stars" we're doing a better job of evaluating and that the results on the field will match that.
I thought that might happen after Thomas committed. However, I think the fact that OU and Kendall are parting ways is a good sign that the coaches feel pretty confident in landing Parker.
