Chris Peak at PantherLair tweated that CB Jason Frimpong verballed to Pitt. A 2- to 3-star athlete who played QB and CB in HS, he projects as a CB.
Obviously CB is a position of need for Pitt. Pitt Script has some YouTube Highlights.
At the moment, Pitt’s recruiting class has crept up to 10. Looks like signing day might have a little extra drama than in past years.
Yah, J-Maile. Wanny was a lousy recruiter. Was his 2011 recruiting class ranked No.1 in the nation? Nah. Only No.16. (I believe that it was ranked No. 1 in the BE, but anyone can be ranked No. 1 in the BE.) Any of Wanny’s recruits currently playing in the NFL? Well, maybe a couple of them are and are even starters. But will any players get drafted this year? Outside of Lewis, Baldwin, Sheard, Romeus and Hynoski, I can’t think of any. Now that we have Todd Graham as a coach, I’ll bet a few of his players will get drafted in the NFL.
Little wonder that you are not satisfied with the results of Wanny’s recruiting
BTW, J-Maile. I think that you have a point. So what if DW was getting 4-star recruits. The 2-star recruits that Graham is bringing in aren’t that many notches below Wanny’s recruits.
Get off Wannstedts man meat. Nice guy, but a loser as a coach.
Anyone who thought that Coach Graham was going to pull a bunch of recruits back or get the greatest class ever need to get a cold dose of reality.
He was only trying to hype up a disenchanted fanbase…and just the fact he has gotten various 4-star types to take another look at Pitt was incredible.
The fact remains..this year was shot to hell. The recriotomg c;ess. whatever it becomes, is no indication of Graham’s ability to recruit.
You got give him a mulligan if you have any sense in reality.
Next year is the year that matters…not just across the country but also in Western Pa. which supposedly is rich in talent.
Graham is rebuilding the relationships that were destroyed by the Pederson-Nordenberg fiasco that occured since December.
Anyone who is criticizing Graham now based on recruiting is just someone who never wanted to give him a chance in the first place (and everyone knows I was originally in the Bradley camp).
DaveD
I meant recruiting class (not recriotomg c;ess) 🙂
DaveD
But I believe the main point should be … hey, Graham looks to be doing well in recuiting, and things are looking up and we should do well in the future.
There is absolutely no need tocontinue to bash Wanny … a guy who tried ard, brought musch talent to Pitt and ended with a 42-31 record.
If nothing else .. he certainly left th eprogram in much better shape than when he took over. I’ll guarantee you that Graham will not have to start 3 natural freshman his first game like Wanny was forced to do.
Let’s move forward …
We will not get 4 and 5 star recruits here…a few 4 stars at most. I know a lot of people say this and that about how this recruit was a 2 star, now he’s in the NFL, or how the 4 or 5 star played only as a backup. You need great players to make a great team.
I am convinced we are going to stay at the present level of mediocrity for a long time to come. I wish I were wrong, but we don’t have Big East titles in the near future nor a top 20 program.
I was a season ticket holder 5 years and still go to 2 or 3 games a year. I know there will be a few on here that will say “please don’t go back” as they will take my criticism as if I don’t care about the program. It’s not that. It’s the way the football program has been run for the past 25 or so years…I dislike PSU a lot, but when they moved to the Big Ten, I believe they shared the Big 10 titles twice and the last time they won it was 16 years ago. They are still relevant and play on the national scene constantly while being a mediocre team at best. We get scrutinized(justly so) for being in a very mediocre conference and should win the Big East at least every 2 or 3 years. We haven’t been relevant since the early 80’s. What a shame the way the team has fallen over the years.
link to blogs.sites.post-gazette.com
if memory serves, he is a 3 star at Scout and not rated by Rivals
I am not as optimistic as you. Rutgers is going gangbusters in recruiting; Syracuse is improved; Holgorson is going to bring a higher potency offense to WVU. And Louisville will recover from the Kragthorpe miscue. Am I prescient? No. But I don’t wear rose-colored glasses either.
Thanks a lot Steve Pederson.
still waiting for Nich Grigsby and Desimon Green
Would love to see some more OL/DL signings. That’s the foundation. Not sure it’s going to happen at this late stage, though.
The key here is not how much the PITT fans like the recruits, but how much the current coaching staff does.
These in-home visits are not like off season camps where just about anyone can participate and PITT offers one or two kids… these recruits who are visiting PITT at this late stage are specifically targeted and contacted by the coaching staff because they WANT to be able to convince them to come and play in the system the new staff is instituting. The bottom line here – and we’ve heard this a million times in HC interviews across the country – is that the coaching staffs don’t care one bit about the star rankings. They care only about getting kids they can coach up to fit what their own visions are.
Which is the second point; Graham and many other HCs (Petrino, Kelly, Edsall, etc.) have shown indisputably that recruiting in the BE means way less than being able to successfully coach the players to produce as a team… a failing that way way too obvious over the last few years with our ex-coach. Aren’t we all sick and tired of winning the battles in everything that doesn’t really matter – recruit rankings, preseason rankings, NFL draft choices, All-American players – then falling flat on our faces when it actually does matter on the field of play? If you aren’t, then your sense of priority is somewhat skewed.
Third, the poster above – and numerous others I’ve read over the last month on here and elsewhere – have made grand pronouncements that Graham will go, at best, 8-4 next season. Which really cracks me up… we may well do so, but what in Hell did we just do in 2010? And, can anyone in their right mind envision that DW would have magically bettered that in 2011 when he had all the cards falling into place for a great run last season. If anything I think Wannstedt would have continued his downward trend and produced even poorer results next year – after all, one of his hallmarks of consistency was repeated failure to meet the stated goals of getting PITT to a BCS bowl… regardless of how well his previous recruiting classes were ranked.
So, in all honesty, I’ll be satisfied if Todd Graham can take this football program, with all the problems that it has gone through over the last 12 months both on and off the field, and do as well as we did last year. What we are watching unfold now means way less next year than does the actual coaching of the players and the team.
The fact is that the new coach began with 2 ten win seasons and then ‘spiraled down’ to a 5 win season before regrouping to 10 wins this past season.
No one knows what would have happened if Wanny was still here or what will happen with Graham unti actually occurs.
Nonetheless, as I posted above (4:22 pm yesterday) it is time to ‘move forward’, and (1) in complimenting the new coach, there is no need to bash the old one, or (2) in stating doubt about the new coach, there is no use in speculating what the old one would have done.
Whether he is fortunate enough to do that isn’t really important. Through yesterday’s reported commitments, Graham has done an excellent job in a very short time at at least putting together a small (but respectable in quality) recruiting class under the most adverse of circumstances.
Dr. Tom, based on what the 1975 team accomplished and the returning personnel, you did not have a clue that 1976 could be something special???? Hmmmm.
Reed, I envisioned that 2011 would have been a great year under DW, i.e. another 1st place in the BE, and my doctor has not made any adverse comments about my mental health.
Is Pitt going to take every 5-10″ player out of Texas that could not get a scholarship to a BCS school? That is hitting the recruiting trail hard? Kudos to coach Graham? We had a coach that could recruit offensively skilled players. We need muscle.
And the reason we have to “salvage” the recruiting class is the botched firing and hiring process, which resulting in hiring a coach that had no connection whatsoever to the recruiting base.
link to youtube.com
We read and heard the same things prior to the 2007, 08, 09 & 10 seasons also – when PITT was looked upon favorably to win the BE they choked every single time – so I feel comfortable when I use past results to base future projections on.
However, 95% of what we talk about during the offseason are “we’ll have to wait and see” subjects… most especially recruiting where you honestly have to wait at least two years to gauge the quality of a recruiting class. Yet PITT fans do that continually. How many comparisons between DW’s 2011 class and Graham’s 2011 class have we already read – when not one single recruit had even signed on the dotted line yet let alone played a snap of football.
