With less less than five days until LOI Day, Feb 3rd, and when we’ll have the final listing of our 2016 recruiting class I thought we could take a step back and hear some stories about Pitt’s recruiting in years past.
Take a minute and listen to these two pieces. I ran across them the other day and waited until we were sick of Pitt basketball to post them.
First we have how recruiting has changed over the last 35 years or so and then we’ll follow up with a piece on how James Conner was flying under the radar until Pitt figured things out.
Varsity Xtra; Recruiting Different as Night and Day. By Mike White Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Jan 28, 2011. Exactly five years and one day ago today we read this:
Here is a piece written about our great RB James Conner. This was published by Bleacher report back on July 19, 2015 before Conner’s injury in our first game and of course before his diagnosis and subsquent, and ongoing, battle against Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.
Reading this to you all made me realize again just how grounded young Mr. Conner is and how, even with all the physical attributes in the world, one has to have a 100% positive attitude to engage in battle with things that are out to hurt you. Enjoy.
As a follow up here is an article in the P-G about Conner’s treatments;
“Conner, who is undergoing chemotherapy for Hodgkins lymphoma, has finished four of the 12 treatments and the tumors continue to shrink, Gallagher said. In fact, he said Conner’s face no longer has a swollen look now that the tumor that was blocking blood flow to the heart has been reduced.
Conner has reacted well to most of the treatments — No. 4 last week was the roughest — and he has been a regular in the Pitt weight room, lifting and running on the treadmill. Conner gets a treatment every two weeks, and has them scheduled through May.
He has vowed to beat the disease and Dr. Stanley Marks, one of the leading cancer doctors in the world, suggested that Conner could play this season. One game Conner has circled on the Pitt schedule, just released Tuesday, is the Sept. 24 ACC opener at North Carolina. Tar Heels quarterback Mitch Trubisky is a high school rival from Mentor, Ohio.”
Excuse the stumbling while reading – haven’t done it in a long while and rushed to get some football up to talk about.
Some Bits & Pieces:
Here is another edition of Sam Werner’s Red Shirt Diaries where he is counting down to LOI Day. Here he discussed the defensive line recruits.
Here is a piece from Kevin Gorman of the Trib-Review about the WPIAL.
Cardiac Hill weighs in on the Damar Hamlin announcement on Monday at 6:00 pm. Is anyone else other than me getting sick of these dog and pony shows? I hope he says “Pitt is It!” but at this point we’ve seen too many 4* kids fall flat on their face in college ball to wave the flag over this kid’s head. That’s just my opinion though – apparently most Pitt fans feel like he’s the future Emperor of Oakland.
Pittsburgh Sports Report website has a nice listing (from 1/11/16) of where the WPIAL recruits will be playing their college ball. Of those undecided Hudson went to Michigan, Jo-El Shaw to Syracuse and Hamlin and Jackson haven’t committed yet.
Here is Rival’s list of the 2016 class verbals. As of right now we have five 4* (very good!), 14 3* and two 2* recruits which averages out to 3.14 stars per recruit. Compared to DW’s best recruiting class, 2008, (Baldwin, Nix, etc.) that averaged out at 3.15 Narduzzi’s first full class has been very productive.
DW’s 2007 class, (Bostick, Jacobson and McCoy, etc) averaged out to 3.04 for a further comparison.
And a break-down of the 2016 season’s schedule by The Pitt News. Here is a Pitt News article about how Boyd can help himself for the NFL draft, and another piece titled “Athletic Director Scott Barnes talks Strategy”.
In that last piece Pitt fans will welcome his thoughts here:
“Based on past fan input, Barnes also said he’s seriously looking into selling alcohol in the stadium during Pitt games.
Since Pitt moved to the ACC, football fans have jumped at the chance to once again play rival teams like Penn State. Barnes fielded questions about adding rival nonconference teams to Pitt’s basketball schedule. “We’re failing a little bit in the fan interest,” Barnes said. How do you [increase] fan interest? Those rivalries.
Those bold italics are mine. This is exactly what we on the Blather were discussing yesterday. As far as booze goes, I’m surprised he will deign to let the peasants have the same type of pleasure he and the Pitt Fans who have been extorted into ‘donating’ can have.
I ain’t holding my breath on that one.
Wallace took the best offer from Cincy last summer then all of the sudden these P5 schools start showing up (including his dream school OSU.) Are you saying that this kid has no right to turn his back on Cincy whose coach is the very same who left a recruit at the dinner table with no explanation when he received the phone call with Cincy offer. I ASSURE YOU I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP.
Your boy Paulie broke his contract to go back home to leave a large handful of kids he recruited at Pitt …. the kids have the same freakin right when they get a better offer
In an anatomical terms: in the cerebral cortex, pyramidal cells need to synaptic ally reach chandelier cells a few layers away. This process is still evolving in the adolescent brain. I would discuss this at parties with chicks and am still unsure why I never got laid as a result.
Anyway, anyone with teenagers has witnessed this. And those of us with memories can recall the moronic tendencies of our youth.
Couple that with coaches fawning all of you, offering the world, and it is somewhat amazing that these kids can make a decision at all.
Tack on the parents, many of whom are dysfunctional themselves, and it makes for a circus.
Hope the team hasn’t given up, the way the fans seem to have.
Did you really want to say that lately everybody has Jamie’s number?
As far as all these late flip flops being good or bad, right or wrong.. People were overjoyed when pitt took 3 rutgers commits & are excited at the idea of possibly flipping Toney.. So dont say a damn thing when somebody flips a pitt kid. Thats just how this works. Kids are indecisive, coaches know that.
And I don’t blame them for that.
“My boy Pauli”? Are you saying that he shouldn’t have taken another job because he had his own recruits on the Pitt roster? Yes, he has the right to do that, just as roster players have the right to leave Pitt for greener pastures elsewhere.
I’m not sure where your argument is coming from here.
“The WPIAL is right in Pitt’s backyard, so the Panthers have always recruited the region heavily.
At Penn State, however, the Nittany Lions have recruited nearly twice as many players from eastern Pennsylvania (61) than western (32) since 2002. From 2011 through 2014, the Nittany Lions recruited just three players from the western side of the state.”
From the looks of the VA Tech roster, looks like we could get manhandled again if we don’t shoot well. Two 7 foot guys a 6’10” guy and a leading scorer that is 6’7″ 235 lbs.
Almost everybody has a couple of 7 foot guys, our biggest guy is 6’9″. No decent big man since Adams flew in and out of here.
This is kind of weird but to me a sign that the dairy college has fallen on hard times. When they celebrate that they stole a 3 star from us, I chuckle. When you take a 4 or 5 star, it hurts.
Toney would be a good gap filler if Pine goes to tech. I hope he stays committed because Duzzi can help him succeed. Same with Phil Campbell. I would rather Campbell go if that means we get Hamlin.
If you are a coach and Hudson is on his Pitt visit, how much time do you spend with him? The answer is however much time is necessary to get him to rethink his process.
Some of these teams are going after recruits that don’t have a strong relationship built. The kids go for the glamour. Foster did that. Morelli did that. Andrew Johnson did that. Terrelle Pryor did that. I note a trend.
Narduzzi has to build a solid program and more elite local kids will want to stay home. Not all of them and more power to them if they see their futures elsewhere. After all we want elite players from all over to come to Pitt as well.
I disagree with Reed when he says we don’t need Winfree. Our O struggled to score this past year with a good running attack and one of the top 3 receivers in Pitt’s history.
Whose the player(s) that replace T.Boyd next year? We don’t have him anymore. Ford looked good at times, but had very few catches. Best wishes Mr. Winfree wherever you end up (Colorado or Memphis).
Hamlin, Camp and Pine are probable? Miller 50/50? Wallace and Salamon are unlikely. Stay tuned
Regarding Colorado, you can also by marijuana in candy form, much better
Boyd had 42% of the catches.
Ford was next at 12% with 26 catches which isn’t “very few” catches at all.
The TEs had 17% and the RBs had 17% also. All that equals 88% and the other WRs had 12%.
So the WRs broke down as 42% Boyd and 39% all the other WRs… and Ford had over twice as many catches as the next guy in Challingsworth’s 12 catches.
Boyd was the elephant in the room when it came to pass catchers. But that will change this season and Ford will be the #1 target. He has great hands, good speed and an awesome ypc of 19.4.
Much like Devin Street flourished after Baldwin left. In Baldwin’s last season Street had 25 catches. The year after he more than doubled that to 53 and then the next season jumped to 73.
Ford is going to do the exact same thing, if not better, but he has more of a head start than Street did.
There was no guarantee that Winfree was going to start anyway. He played in only 6 games and had only 11 catches at Maryland and I really don’t take into account anything anyone does in JUCO – that is no guarantee at all they can come back and succeed at this level. Remember Greg Cross we were so excited about?
Pitt fans may assume he would start but that was far from guaranteed, but he would most probably have gotten playing time.. We got stars in our eyes with his 4* rating which, as we have seen, doesn’t mean he’d play well at Pitt.
This thing Pitt fans have about our receiving corps not being good is kind of weird. It is like the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill when we have talent on the roster already.
No problems there – plus we have a new OC.
HTP!
We’ll be fine – the depth will be Jr’s and Sr’s.
I don’t think we have that yet in my opinion. I do hope some of our young talent steps up and becomes the attention getter for the offense. The running game will suffer without a top yier WR. That said, I think Orndoff will be a secret weapon for a few games early.
