Building on the "How to defend Paul Wulff" post  that was put up earlier (which you should read if you haven't already) it's interesting to look at our recruiting list from this year and compare them to 2008 and 2009 strictly based on other schools that offered our guys. These things aren't ironclad but it's very interesting directional data to show the quality of our class.

How does this year's class stack up and why does SDSU hate us so much?

 

Generally speaking, 2008 saw Wulff scrambling to grab talent. Doba left him with THREE verbal commitments when he took the job in December. He basically grabbed players that probably turned down Eastern for a "bigger" school. So, Wulff had recruited these kids but they were WAC talent-level at best. He basically needed guys that would stay in the program and hopefully hit on a few guys that turn out to be gems following years of development. The schools you see most often on the offer list beyond WSU are Eastern or Portland State with a LOT of guys that had no other offers listed.

In 2009 we saw a fantastic class come on board. This was a combination of upheaval over at UW and the ability to sell a new staff at WSU. If we pull a class like this every year we'll be bowling more often than not. You skim the list and you see 12 of 23 players had BCS conference or Mountain West offers. That's about 55% of our signees that chose us over direct competitors. Ideally that number would be closer to 70% once we are re-established. Nevertheless, a great number given the season that we had and certainly a group of players that you can build around.

How does the current commit list look? Is it closer to 2008 or 2009?

The current class we have is tracking better than 2009. It's actually a class that is Pac-10 competitive. We've got 8 of 17 guys that have BCS or Mountain West offers listed. That doesn't even include guys like Halliday and Dunn who are being recruited hard by Cal. Add those guys in and you've got 10 of 17 guys with big school offers. Fantastic stuff given the season we are having. You can see why Wulff was so pissed this week about coaches trying to poach his players. He's got guys committed that are going to help any program they sign with.

So, why does San Diego State hate us so much? Well, they are another West coast program trying to re-build. They hired Brady Hoke who was a finalist for the WSU head coaching position. He's clearly going after a nearly identical type of player that we are going after. The problem is they are in the Mountain West and we are in the Pac-10 and they keep losing recruiting battle after recruiting battle to us. So far, we've won 6 head-to-head recruiting battles with them. They've currently got 9 verbals and only one is rated above 2 stars. None of their verbals have us even listed as being interested in them. Close to 1/3 of our verbals also have a San Diego State offer and two guys had already made visits to San Diego before verballing to us. Ricky Galvin, our latest running back commit was reportedly the number one running back on their board. Yes, I know it's San Diego State and not UCLA we are currently competing against but this is the type of player we can sign and build with right now. UCLA and Oregon State competition comes as we have proven this staff is on the right track. Sorry SDSU but we need these guys more than you do.

 

 

---