This years freshman class was
- Thread starter gary2
- Start date
You may be right. But ”recruiting classes” now are about much more than freshmen.
In fact, with the way the rules are structured now, it can be a big risk to take a high school player who has no experience whatsoever playing college ball because the college program has NO control as to the length of time you may have a player.
So particularly at positions that require more size and strength - as well as experience - like OL and DL, many schools are now looking more at the portal.
Examples of what can happen with high school line recruits (since a school has no control to guarantee that they’ll be here any length of time) are Okunlola and Edwards. Young guys who play early on the lines are seemingly more apt to try to shop themselves on the free agent market and see what kind of value they can command.
Pitt will still recruit some HS linemen. Then try to retain the better ones. Try to develop them so they improve over time. But with no contractual control, there is a risk that they can leave at any time. So looking at some guys in the portal that at least have some level of college experience to evaluate is becoming more prevalent. Pro sports have a CBA and they can have player control through contract length. But not college sports as it now exists.
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i hate to say it but for us to succeed, we really need to go 50/50 with portal players and incoming freshman. just see soo many misses with our incoming freshmen, really discouraging..
Inexcusable coming of an ACC championship, and two top 25 finishes to have the recruiting fall off the cliff like that.
New staff. Lack of recent foundation with our recruiting "universe".
I'm pretty sure your point can be extended for multiple recruiting classes. Many on this board will say, "Rankings don't matter in recruiting", but those are words spoken by mediocre programs.
I feel like the reality of Narduzzi's recruiting abilities showed after the ACC championship year. Many on this board will remember the recruiting bump that Wanny got just after beating WVU (13-9!!!). Duzz can't buy any bump. Why?
Look where many of our players transfer to? And the ones who chase the money haven't been too successful. Then, look at the schools where we get transfers. I think it's pretty obvious the trend this program is on. We are a mid-tier MAC program with MAC talent.
Narduzzi’s strength is player development. Players were recruited with the expectation they would be ready to step in as upperclassmen. Unfortunately that is no longer the reality in college sports. Now the only way to win is with deep pockets or to hope your transfers hit the ground running and stay healthy.
I was just going to same something very similar. Pitt isn't going to recruit too many day-one starters out of high school and a lot of players seem to like the idea to move around. I still think Pitt will do relatively alright in keeping their own, but there is more urgency to get instant impact players.
Staff didn't turnover until last year after the 3-9 season. Really should have seen the surge in 2022 & 2023 and didn't see any uptick in recruiting results.
The problem was numbers and not necessarily the recruits. They kept way to many older mediocre COVID year guys around rather than pushing the out.
2022 class only had 12 recruits, which is ridiculous. 23 &23 classes had Kyle Louis, Jimmy Scott, Baer, Gandy, Okunlola, Fitzsimmons, Biles. Brookins, Lovelace, Bass, Kenny Johnson, BJ Williams, and Neal out of 31 recruits.
Get the yearly number into the mid 20s and you hopefully add another 6 of these guys.
No idea how you can evaluate the freshmen OL. Tough position to play significant time as a freshmen anyway but the one in the 2024 class were all sort of projects.
DL had the best talent. Edwards looked very promising and he is already gone. Brewu played and had flashes, so there’s promise there. Whittington didn’t play much at all that I recall. Hopefully he puts in work and pushes into the two deep rotation next year.
DL had the best talent. Edwards looked very promising and he is already gone. Brewu played and had flashes, so there’s promise there. Whittington didn’t play much at all that I recall. Hopefully he puts in work and pushes into the two deep rotation next year.
It can be a dilemma with HS recruits. If young guys like those DL mentioned above do play and show promise, someone will be in their ear to test the FA market (like Okunlola and Edwards were enticed).
If it’s recommended to them by the coaches that they RS, they can get antsy and think they’re being held back.
Recruiting is so very different now. So much turnover. So little ability to plan for the future with assurance or certainty. But you absolutely have to get it right to have a chance.
Yep. Keeping a lot of those guys around for the extra year with no extra scholarships allowed backfired. The numbers didn’t work very well, as you accurately point out.
Yes. Take a look. Pitt is 7-6. Narduzzi is dealing with it pretty well. He has a finite pool of $ to work with and built a roster that went over .500. Given what Pitt is paying in NIL, which I'm going with an educated assumption is around $6 to $8 million, squeezing .500 out of that isn't bad. In case you haven't noticed, there isn't a single program in the ACC that is nationally relevant. A couple of ACC programs actually spent like drunken sailors hoping to be elite, and failed miserably. Pitt is running a program on a cheap and getting mediocrity. In this environment, that's a win.
Tony Bennett wasn't capable of dealing with it, nor did he want to. For his entire career at UVA, he recruited players ranked 50-150 (not exactly blue blood talent) and he produced elite results because of player development, especially with bigs that in his pack line defense. He recruits big men, slaps a red-shirt on them, works the hell out of them, and they contribute when they are juniors & seniors. NIL changed all that. They came to UVA, stayed a couple of years and left for more money. Now, UVA front court is a joke and they are just another bad team/program in a conference littered with bad teams.
