We all know we our incoming class is fantastic, with three consensus Top 100 commits who rose quickly up the charts senior year and a fourth local recruit who say just outside the Top 100 and fits a strong need.
And now our 2015 class is addressing the gigantic big man need we have and we're very close on several amazing guards like Trier and Reaves.
And all this in the context of the idea that one of our big recruiting issues has been consecutive classes with depth -- we've had a lot of great recruits but we've rarely managed to have consistent classes full of quality recruits. For example, the great 2011 class, as snakebit as it was, was followed up by two classes that have yielded only DSR (admittedly great), Cameron and half a year of Josh Smith.
So given all this, is this Thompson's best recruiting run, two consecutive years or otherwise?
The only real competition* is the 2006/2007/2008 run:
*in terms of rankings - obviously 2004 is our best class period2006Vernon Macklin - #16
DaJuan Summers - #26
Jeremiah Rivers
Transfer: first playing year of Patrick Ewing, Jr., #97 in his class.
2007Austin Freeman - #14
Chris Wright - #31
Nikita Mescheriakov
Omar Wattad
2008Greg Monroe - #6
Henry Sims - #51
Jason Clark - #62
Transfer: first playing year of Julian Vaughn, #73 in his class.
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That's a pretty great run. Lots of high level recruits, with four McD AAs and Summers being a Jordan AA. Using a very simple point system (100 pts for the #1 ranked recruit, 99 for #2, etc, and no points for someone outside the Top 100) we come up with the best run here being
369 points for the 2007-08 run and
533 points for the three year run.
For context, the next best two year run of recruiting is... basically occurring now, if you give transfers credit to Josh Smith. It's
246 points with Cameron, Smith, and the Copeland, White, Campbell, Peak class, though that should increase as new rankings come out. Still, it's not as strong of a two year run as the 2007-2008 class by essentially a Top 10 recruit.
Here's our current run, remembering that Smith is a lower impact transfer than Ewing and Vaughn because of timing:
2013Reggie Cameron - #75
Transfer: Josh Smith, #18 in his class
2014Isaac Copeland - #40
Paul White - #58
LJ Peak - #68
Tre Campbell
Trey Mourning
But once we add in the current class, we begin to see our best recruiting ever:
2015Jessie Govan - Likely at least #40 (being conservative)
Noah Dickerson - ~#55
Marcus Derrickson - ~#75
The two year total is
270 and the three year total is
370. However, we're being conservative on 2015, not accounting for the rises in 2014 and having no guard commits in 2015 yet. But even with adding 60 or so points for the first two points, we're still shy of the the earlier run. But that's before any guard play.
So, basically it comes down to this: with guard commits, the 2014/2015 classes will likely be our highest ranked two year run of recruits under III. If the guard includes a very highly rated recruit, it'll be the best three year run.
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So what does that mean? It obviously increases our odds of success, but nothing is guaranteed. It's worth noting that while the 2006 and 2007 classes were key to early success, that success was even more driven by a relatively unheralded 2004 class. And once those classes reached maturity, transfers (Macklin, Rivers), early entry (Monroe, Summers), lack of defensive focus, lack of frontcourt depth really marred the team's ability to succeed in they years those classes' upperclass years.
Similarly, we also saw 2011 gutted by early entry (Porter), academics/transfer (Whittington) and injury (Adams). Those teams were good, but we never saw as strong success as we did when the unheralded 2004 class combined with strong 2006/2007 classes.
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Given that, maybe the most important item here is depth. Over the 2014/2105 class, we're all but guaranteed now 6 Top 100 RSCI recruits, and very possibly more. And our seventh recruit here is just outside, more Jabril Trawick than Nikita Mescheriakov. And let's not forget 2016/17 is important as well -- it didn't help that the 2008 class -- our best by recruiting measures so far -- was followed by two consecutive classes of Hollis Thompson and Markel Starks as the only above average BE players. We need to be able to reload better than just two strong players.