Sunbelt Recruiting Rankings

[MDaniels84]

First of all, let me say that I don't really get overly excited about recruiting rankings. With that being said, I have seen plenty of message board fodder regarding how Georgia Southern has out recruited us for this inaugural season in the SunBelt. I was just looking around and noticed that Scout.com who is fairly reputable as well has us ranked 4th in the SunBelt rankings and Georgia Southern down around 10th in the Belt.
With our history of finding raw talent (see Brian Quick, Armanti, Corey Lynch, Kevin Richardson, etc... ), I am more excited about the next team leader and star waiting in the wings. Really looking forward to making some new memories with so many of you that I have shared App games with since the late 70's.

[moehler]

its been alot of fun this year watching the recruiting process, alot different than recruiting in the FCS, and your right, the star system is so inconsistent, you cant use it to as the main source to figure out if you have a good class. The three things I looked at were, 1. was our recruits being offered by more established programs, which, alot of them were, 2. minimal JC offers, 3.how many players did we lose to larger, established programs. On the second, I had a problem with GS because they are bringing in alot of JC players, that's risky, you only have them 2 years, and if they don't produce, immediately, your screwed, and on the third point, we did pretty well, I believe we only lost 3 to larger programs, I thought that was pretty good.

[EastHallApp]

Scout doesn't cover our recruiting very closely - note that neither App nor GSU has a Scout affiliated site. Did they even have us included in the Sun Belt rankings before signing day? I thought last time I checked they didn't, and they were way behind on our commitment list too. I have a feeling they went in after signing day (when they could more easily get official info) and just filled in the lists then. Though I can't say for sure.

(But note that they erroneously have Jalin Moore listed as "Jalin Malone." It also looks like his and several other profiles were just recently created, as they contain no info other than name, height, weight, HS and hometown, which is what Scout would find through a cursory look at the official signee list.)

[EastHallApp]

Anyway, there was some good discussion on this in the 2014 recruiting thread. I don't think JuCos are a bad thing, especially for a transitional program. But I will say that I am a little suspicious of GSU's ranking on 247. They were really low until a week before signing day, then they got a bunch of commits from unranked recruits, several of whom had no other FBS offers. And 247 gave many of those recruits 3* rankings, which is pretty unusual for prospects with no other offers and who hadn't been ranked by any of the major sites that late in the process.

By comparison, many more of App's commits had other FBS offers, including some with BCS offers. Doesn't mean they'll definitely be better than GSU's class, but in general, I'd rather sign recruits who were in demand by other FBS programs than those who weren't.

And even by 247's estimate, it's not like they were killing us. They were ranked 1st in the Sun Belt, we were 2nd, not far behind (120 total points to 116).

[GoApps70]

Thought this was an interesting post by Crump 1 on CSNbbs that took the time to look up who won the Sun Belt battles for recruits:

APP: 13-6 (.684)
Idaho: 4-2 (.667)
stAte: 8-8 (.500)
ULM: 4-4 (.500)
TxSt: 4-6 (.400)
GS: 5-8 (.385)
GaSt: 6-11 (.353)
Troy: 4-8 (.333)
UL: 2-5 (.286)
USA: 4-11 (.267)
NMSU: 1-8 (.111)

SUPERLATIVES

Most likely to sign your target: App State - 13 steals
Most likely to sign a guy everyone else wanted: Ark St. - Daryl Rollins + Kyle Harris
Most likely to see what could have been your team playing for someone else: Ga. State - App took 4 of their targets
Most likely to sign a JUCO: Troy - too many to count
Top of the line: UL - Signed 2 players rated 85.

--------------------------------------------
APPALACHIAN STATE
Latrell Gibbs - GS
Shaedon Meadors - GS
Isaiah Lewis - GS
Jordan Noil - GaSt
Junior Sigalo - Troy
Alanmichael Harkness - stAte
Jordan Ford - Idaho
Montez McGuire - USA
Brandon Walton - GaSt
JP Caruso - UL
Owen Painter - stAte, GaSt
Nikia Cathey - USA
Josh Boyd - GaSt, USA

The other SBC teams and who beat us out are listed here:
http://csnbbs.com/thread-636749-post-10 ... id10412734

[ebapps1]

Anyway, there was some good discussion on this in the 2014 recruiting thread. I don't think JuCos are a bad thing, especially for a transitional program. But I will say that I am a little suspicious of GSU's ranking on 247. They were really low until a week before signing day, then they got a bunch of commits from unranked recruits, several of whom had no other FBS offers. And 247 gave many of those recruits 3* rankings, which is pretty unusual for prospects with no other offers and who hadn't been ranked by any of the major sites that late in the process.

By comparison, many more of App's commits had other FBS offers, including some with BCS offers. Doesn't mean they'll definitely be better than GSU's class, but in general, I'd rather sign recruits who were in demand by other FBS programs than those who weren't.

And even by 247's estimate, it's not like they were killing us. They were ranked 1st in the Sun Belt, we were 2nd, not far behind (120 total points to 116).

You can't put much stock in the * rating system to begin with. I was listening to Mike&Mike on ESPN radio on Signing Day and Golic was talking about one of his sons that went to Notre Dame being rated as a 4* going into his senior season in HS. Because he had already committed to ND he didn't go to all of the camps put on by all of the sporting good companies(Nike, Under Armour, etc.). By the time he signed with ND, he was listed as a 2* or not rated at all. It's all subjective anyway.

[hapapp]

Thought this was an interesting post by Crump 1 on CSNbbs that took the time to look up who won the Sun Belt battles for recruits:

APP: 13-6 (.684)
Idaho: 4-2 (.667)
stAte: 8-8 (.500)
ULM: 4-4 (.500)
TxSt: 4-6 (.400)
GS: 5-8 (.385)
GaSt: 6-11 (.353)
Troy: 4-8 (.333)
UL: 2-5 (.286)
USA: 4-11 (.267)
NMSU: 1-8 (.111)

SUPERLATIVES

Most likely to sign your target: App State - 13 steals
Most likely to sign a guy everyone else wanted: Ark St. - Daryl Rollins + Kyle Harris
Most likely to see what could have been your team playing for someone else: Ga. State - App took 4 of their targets
Most likely to sign a JUCO: Troy - too many to count
Top of the line: UL - Signed 2 players rated 85.

--------------------------------------------
APPALACHIAN STATE
Latrell Gibbs - GS
Shaedon Meadors - GS
Isaiah Lewis - GS
Jordan Noil - GaSt
Junior Sigalo - Troy
Alanmichael Harkness - stAte
Jordan Ford - Idaho
Montez McGuire - USA
Brandon Walton - GaSt
JP Caruso - UL
Owen Painter - stAte, GaSt
Nikia Cathey - USA
Josh Boyd - GaSt, USA

The other SBC teams and who beat us out are listed here:
http://csnbbs.com/thread-636749-post-10 ... id10412734

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting it. That had take him a long time to put that together.