This from ESPN this morning: Ohio State Buckeyes gained commitments from five-star prospects Justin Hilliard and Jashon Cornell on Wednesday. The ESPN 300 prospects announced their decisions live on ESPN.com. They give the Buckeyes their first five-star commitments for the 2015 class. While early commitments have been slow, things certainly improved rapidly today.
Urban steals one from Michigan (I'd heard Cornell was going to uM) and one from ND (Hilliard much desired by ND). Excellent players for you guys!
Terry, Here is the current list of recruits for the 2015 class: Note the wide number of out of state recruits. 2015 Ohio State Recruiting Class ATH Eric Glover-Williams (5-11 165) Canton McKinley CB Jamel Dean (6-1 180) Cocoa (Cocoa, FL) QB Joey Burrow (6-4 205) Athens (The Plains, OH) DB Tyler Green (6-3 195) DeMatha Catholic (Hyattsville, MD) OL Grant Schmidt (6-6 275) Roosevelt (Sioux Falls, SD) LS Liam McCullough (6-3 230) Worthington Kilbourne LB Nick Conner (6-3 225) Dublin Scioto (Dublin, OH) DE Dre'Mont Jones (6-5 250) Cleveland St. Ignatius CB Denzel Ward (5-11 170) Macedonia Nordonia OT Kevin Feder (6-9 305) Don Bosco Prep (Ramsey, NJ) LB Justin Hilliard (6-2 230) Cincinnati St. Xavier DE Jashon Cornell (6-3 265) Cretin-Hall Derham (St.Paul, MN)
You got yourself one hell of a coach and recruiter, Don. Two things I notice right away; the number of Catholic school players and the Cretin-Durham pipeline to South Bend has been interrupted.
George, Coach Meyer is a great recruiter! Kelly seems to be doing fine at Notre Dame as well. Looking forward to another college football season.
Muschamp is great recruiter also..... but Meyer can run a program and assemble a staff that works together and wins championships. Maybe one day Muschamp will get it...... then again maybe he won't.
Interesting that Urban is expanding the Ohio State recruiting out of state. At Texas that was one of the criticisms that fans had of Mack Brown in spite of his continually bringing in highly rated classes. He didn't go after top national players. Now supposedly the reason(s) he did this were 1) Tons of talent in Texas and no need to go out of state 2) It kept Texas HS coaches happy to see their kids going to the Flagship University in the state. Now that Charlie Strong is the HC, many are hoping that his years at ND and in the SEC will result in Texas competing for top national talent as well. Not that anybody wants to ignore in state talent but select some national targets of high caliber and go after them. Right now though Texas recruiting is struggling a little with the rise of Texas A&M and the lure of the SEC. So the question is always will the state HS Coaches be mad that the coach of Texas or Ohio State is bringing in more out of state talent and not be as supportive of them or will it be business as usual.
Not to hijak Don's thread, but I will! I keep wondering when Steve Spurrier is going to retire, but it doesn't seem like it will be soon. He seems to have So.Car on the rise, they are a top 5 in recruiting. You know Spurrier knows what to do with players and how to build a program. Has he finally turned the corner and will So.Car. be the top team in the SEC East for awhile now?
Oh and to further hijack Don's topic, sorry Don! Here's what Alabama is doing in recruiting, again. This is the number of Rivals Top 100 players they have verbals from, Irish have zero. kp is no doubt unimpressed till they actually get on the field and prodcue! Alabama: 11 Rest of SEC: 18 Pac-12: 7 Big10: 6 ACC: 5 Big12: 4 Other: 0
Meyer at Florida was also a national recruiter.... selling the Gator brand all over the map.... but he did well within the home base of Florida also and Strong spent many years at Florida as one of the chief recruiters for Spurrier, Zook and Meyer so he knows how that works also. I hear that SouCar is a force to be reckoned with this year....maybe so. They have won 11 games in a season several times now under Spurrier so possibly their turn at the champion's table is coming.
Terry, what worries me is, is that number still 11 in February? Having 11 of the Rivals Top 100 in July does nothing for the Tide. 8)