Recruiting in the bad old days

[MountainSpider]

I thought I made an obvious statement with this post about our improved recruiting: https://richmond.forums.rivals.com/...2019-richmond-commit.10829/page-3#post-250024

Unfortunately, I unwittingly helped hijack a thread about Tyler Burton with that post. Rather than continue going off topic in that thread, I decided to make a separate post showing the four years prior to our turn-around class of Sherod/Buck/Golden in 2016.

Here they are, to the best of my knowledge:

2015
KoVien Dominaus
Julius Johnson
Jesse Pistokache

2014
Chandler Diekvoss
Khwan Fore
Paul Friendshuh
Kadeem Smithen

2013
Josh Jones
ShawnDre' Jones
Tim Singleton

2012
Terry Allen
Deion Taylor


The three classes after Sherod/Buck/Golden may not be as good as that year, but they still look a lot better than some of our old classes. I believe we have multiple players who could potentially score more points in their career than the entire 2014 and 2015 classes combined or at least come close to it.

 

[97spiderfan]

Mountain, Good post.

The 2014 and 2015 classes should have gotten Mooney canned and had he not had the 10 year contract and Keith Gill running our athletic department, he probably would have gotten canned. As it was, he essentially got a do over.

If we are ever going to be a program that regularly competes for NCAA bids, our recruiting classes need to look like his 2016 class. Buck and Sherod had multiple BCS offers, Buck was player of the year twice in Richmond, Sherod, the all time leading scorer in Virginia high school. Golden had some nice offers and obviously he was a grand slam in terms of recruits (and will be up being better than either Buck or Sherod).

Unfortunately, to me 2017 and 2018 look a lot like 2014-2015. Gilyard is a great get (so was Khwan in 2014) and then the rest of the group is a bunch of really under-recruited guys, just like 2014-2015 and a couple outright panic recruits in Grace and AJ. (Sal had some really nice offers and also stands out).

So, to me, Mooney is just continuing a pattern of being a really mediocre to outright miserable recruiter, with the 2016 year standing as the exception to which has been a 5 plus year pattern of losing recruiting battles and then settling for guys with substantially lower interest from lesser programs than ours.

The 2018 guys have yet to play a minute yet in college so I could be wrong about this class and if so will admit as much.

 

[spider23]

97, You are right for the greater part. I used to fight you to death over the Koviens and Smithens. I'm still waiting to tell you: Told you b@#$%!!!!!

Now, as we all know I am very level headed and analytical. It is easy to see that Mooney is not a great recruiter. Yes we have our hurdles, but DAMN truther nation - you have admit we have a ton going for us. It shouldn't be this hard. But it is for Mr. bland.

 

[SpiderTrap]

From a recruiting standpoint - here is what I would like to see on average from our program.
Lets assume each year you get on average 4 kids to recruit and bring in. I know some years will be more and others less, but 4 is a good number to start with.

2 of them need to be on par with other teams in our league. Meaning - they should be recruited by A10 level programs or even some lower level BCS schools. Does "who is recruiting/has offered a scholarship" tell the whole story - certainly not, but they can't all be wrong can they? And I like my chances a lot better if I know a kid is being recruited by others on the same level or above A10 standards.

2 - under-recruit, maybe these are kids under the radar, being recruited by lower schools or fewer schools, but we see as a good fit. They may be under-recruited because of size (Anderson HOF) or maybe just get them late because they had a good senior year - but these are guys that maybe we see developing into contributors after a 1-2 years.

Problem is lately - we typically seem to be heavy on the under-recruit kids. Which is okay - if they all pan out and become the players we though they would. But that is a big gamble.

And I don't doubt admissions plays a role in this as well - which will be interesting to see if the new AD has any changes on this topic to open up the admissions a little more which opens up our pool of recruiting.

 

[MrTbone]

I think you have to presume on average you get three recruits. There are only 13 scholarships a year.

Two have to hit per year. Better chance if they’re being recruited by similar profile or better schools. If not, coach has to be on the case and have a good feeling of the fit.