http://www.roanoke.com/sports/columns_and_blogs/blogs/andy_bitter_virgin...
This was a great research effort by Andy and Co. at the Roanoke Times. Goes pretty in depth about recruiting classes and has some great quotes from Fuente.
It's an approach new Hokies coach Justin Fuente looks like he'll carry on.
"I believe the closer people are, with a few exceptions — sometimes you have connections at some places — but in general the closer people are, the more you know about them, which goes back to your evaluation," Fuente said. "You have a tendency of doing a better job evaluating guys the closer that they are to you. Know more about them.
Fuente's opinion about his role in Virginia.
"We have an obligation, first of all, as college coaches to service the high schools — through clinics, through counseling, through whatever we can do, bringing them to practice," Fuente said. "Whatever we can do so those coaches can continue to develop and coach better. And we can learn from them as well. But to me, that's the first obligation in the state.
"The second obligation is to evaluate the players in the state of Virginia, and then try and recruit the ones that we feel like fit in our program."
Finally his philosophy on getting the top in state talent.
The familiarity comes into play most with evaluation, which Fuente thinks is paramount in recruiting. Fuente estimates that of the consensus top-10 players in Virginia by recruiting websites, the Hokies are targeting about six, which is where the major battles lie.
"There's probably four of those guys that we don't want," Fuente said. "Not because they're not talented. Throughout our evaluation, we determined those are not the type of guys that fit at Virginia Tech. So now you're down to six that you're really fighting everybody for. You know what I mean? I think the number is smaller than it's perceived. ...
"When you sign a guy and everybody is excited about him on signing day, and he's no longer with the team in two years, you did not do your program any good. And sometimes we take risks on those guys. But trying to find a guy that's going to be a ball player in four years, or three years, in addition to the few guys who are immediate, walk-on-campus impact guys — which are fairly rare — is kind of the crux of it."
Comments
Man I'm excited and opptomistic for the Feunte era but boy do I not agree with this statement. I'm sure my fellow TKPers could come up with a pretty impressive list of 2 year players.
Not counting the redshirt season, Michael Vick anyone?
unless I am mistaken, he is not talking about players that go pro, rather about recruits that are going to flame out/transfer/be kicked off in 2 years because they either didn't fit with the program, the school, location or have character issues. Specifically I think he is saying that they are only offering and recruiting those out of the top ten that they think will excel and not simply because they are top ten.
He wants very low negative turnover.
Besides you need to be around for 3 to go pro
No player can be 2 years out of high school and jump to NFL. Fuente is saying he is not going to star/list chase kids, that just because some rating service thinks a kid is the 2nd best talent in the state he is not going to offer him unless he fits not only the football team but VT the school.
Yet of the top 10 in state this year it seems like we've offered all but the one that transferred from California? I agree with some of his argument that you aren't always going to offer all the top kids. Not good fits, not a position of need, multiple top 10 kids of the same position etc. but I think he's trying to understate how many top 10 kids we'll go after to lower expectations.
Offered according to whom? Coaches can't talk about what kids that got offered.
Kids can talk about which schools have offered them. Which of the top 10 do you think we have/haven't offered? Hunter, Williams, villain, laborn, garbutt, ewell, Crosby and matos just off the top of my head had offers. Seems like more than 6?
How many of those had offers under Beamer as HC? Let's look at 2018 classes for offers.
All of them were actively recruited by the current staff regardless of when their offers originated.
Browser sucks at work, but tejada Mitchell, ricky slade, asiedu, pope, spalding, artis all may be in the top 10. There are some more with offers, but you'll have to look up the top 10 on other sites.
http://www.rankbyoffers.com/2018fbplayers/
They held offers and fans saw "top 10" of course the staff is going to recruit them. Let's wait to see how Fuente recruits his own lists and evaluations.
Through his own evaluation, Fuente is offering and actively recruiting most of the top prospects by star rank in Virginia (for example in 2017). There have been a few offers questioned by the recruitnik community (Kalil Pimpleton, Malik Willis) based on stars/other P5 offers, but those recruits have gotten a bump in rankings after camp performances (Pimpleton) or more P5 offers/interest (Willis).
Long story short, it doesn't seem like Fuente has an issue identifying talent. Landing top targets (who more often than not correlate to highly ranked recruits), has eluded Fuente very early in his tenure.
Atlantic HS with the most NFL draft picks followed by the 757 schools. Interesting that Dematha Catholic has the most recruited players. Shows a high school coach who trusted our program, plus getting some well rounded individuals.
What strikes me is how successful our in state talent has been to winning. When we won games, it was because we landed good instate talent. Getting second bested in state has hurt us in the win column.
I don't know how I feel about recruiting anymore. I will just trust Fuente/Cornelsen, Foster, and Shibest can get the most out of their units be it offense, defense, or special teams. I just think that winning isn't going to guarantee us the top instate recruits.
While winning doesn't guarantee anything, I think it goes a long way toward solving the recruiting issues causing all the angst here.
Chicken or Egg
Winning helps recruiting.
Recruiting helps winning
So how do you break out when you are mediocre on both fronts?
First you luck into some talent that loves your school anyway. Your luck holds and you win a few close games. Perceptions start to shift and you are seen as a team that is headed in the right direction, momentum builds on the recruiting trail.
But hold it, the key ingredient is luck?
Luck = hard work, smart preparation, and solid culture that is ready to take advantage of the smallest opportunity that tilts things in your advantage. Luck is earned and created, it is not blind.
Luck = Michael Vick, Frank Beamer and Andre Davis?
I think so. We did it once before. But it must work in reverse as well, a couple of recruiting misses, lose some close games, momentum drops off and bam. In retrospect a couple of coaching hires didn't work out, not prepared to take advantage of recruiting opportunities and you get bit by the injury bug and it's time for a coaching change. That's why they call it rebuilding. I think we were fortunate to have strung together the winning seasons we did. And to make the kind of transition we have, puts us in a pretty good spot to rebuild quickly. Time will tell.....
Fuente can sell the offensive side of the ball very well from the looks of it.
I hope Bud and Wiles can somehow find a way to land 1-2 top defensive players in the next year or two.
Not to be a cynic, but how has Fuente showed that he can sell it?
he convinced every WR who committed to Beamer and Loeffler to stay in a matter of weeks all while recruiting Jerod Evans away from Texas where he was going to go.
None of them had tremendous offer lists though just to be fair. Hoping he's able to land some difference makers soon, but don't think he's landed anyone of the caliber we already have on offense at the skill positions yet.
Diablo was my favorite WR from either last class or this class thus far fwiw.
I guess you could say they didn't have tremendous offers but we kept them and that's a pretty big deal. Otherwise we would be left with the same issue as last year 0 depth. Hopefully he will be able to get 1 or 2 of those WR's to produce some stats this year because Ford and Phillips could definitely use the help.
So I didn't see a better recent thread to post this, but apparently fansided has done a season preview for us:
http://nflmocks.com/2016/07/17/virginia-tech-complete-2016-season-preview/
The author, Sam Beckenstein, notes that we lost key contributors Brewer, Dadi, and Kendall. I found this interesting, in that Brewer gets sort of mixed reviews in my mind, Kendall was out most of the year, and Dadi (as french noted in another thread) may have been sort of a mixed blessing with his speed on the outside (plus his busted club of a hand).
He goes on to say that Ford, McMillan, and Moto are our key returnees. Ford is a no-brainer, but Travon, from all reports, hasn't locked down the starting position yet. We've yet to see how he'll be used, although I certainly would have said he was a key returnee as well. Moto, to me, is the biggest question mark. If he plays spectacularly this year our defense will be absurd.
I thought we discussed this recently but couldn't find the right thread.
thanks for the link, but the last sentence spoiled the entire article for me:
puh-lease
and against Virginia to end the year.
This reminds me of the whole alternate dimension thing from Stranger Things.
In an alternate dimension that may have been listed as a spoiler alert.