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2016 Football Recruiting Thread - Notes from NSD Press Conference and Reception

DeacsOrDie said:
See thread title. I believe we have.
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Indeed. See summary at post #3 in this thread. The strategy for 2016 appears to be to offer RBs and WRs early and often. Realistic targets too. Not just Rivals 250 types.
 
Tino Ellis ‏@IamTinoEllis 27m27 minutes ago
Blessed to receive my 7th offer from WakeForest University 🏈 #DeamonDeacons ⚫️🌟⚫️🌟
 
I'll never understand "Deamon Deacons."
 
@RBSFootball: Congratulations to 2016 ATH @ZMcphearson (Zechariah McPhearson) on receiving an offer from Wake Forest. #GoDeacs @rivalsmike
 
@RBSFootball: Congratulations to 2016 DB @___almightysir (Sir Patrick Scott) on receiving an offer from Wake Forest. #GoDeacs @rivalsmike
 
4-star 2016 OL Sean Pollard (Pinecrest HS / Southern Pines, NC) committed to Clemson on Friday. I’m posting this for 3 reasons:

1) Pollard was one of the bigger name game visitors for Wake Forest this year (attending the Gardner-Webb game and then rumored for the Virginia Tech game as well) and if IIRC was one of the biggest 2016 players to attend the Clawson camp.

2) This continues the trend of top 2016 players in North Carolina leaving the state. This is in contrast to 2015 where 8 of the top 15 players in the state have committed to NCSU or UNC. Now the first 6 top-ranked players in the 2016 class to commit have all headed out of state.

3) Duke had been considered the leader for Pollard at one point just a few months ago. At one point Pollard set up his announcement date and then cancelled it shortly before committing. While Duke has unquestionably has improved their recruiting, they have yet to land a highly ranked player in state. For the 2014-2016 classes, Duke has 1 commitment out of the top 25 players in North Carolina (#13 Johnathan Lloyd from Graham, NC in 2014). This demonstrates both Duke’s success with an expanded recruiting territory, but also the fact that recruiting North Carolina is just a really tough proposition.
 
Rivals has updated their 2016 rankings for North Carolina. It now includes their evaluations from the 2014 high school season and has been expended to a TOP 40. There have been some significant changes. Here is where the current Deac94 Big Board member now rank (rankings are OVERALL ranking in the state). As a reminder, I exclude players if I judgmentally conclude that Wake has no realistic shot at getting a commitment from them (i.e. if they don’t mention Wake at all in interviews)

#8 RB Jordon Brown (Southern Durham HS / Durham, NC) – Kendall Hinton’s teammate, but a longshot for Wake Forest IMO by I’m keeping him on the Board for now.

#9 WR Cornell Powell (Rose HS / Greenville, NC) – He will probably come off the Board on the next update as I think Wake is falling too far behind

#15 LB Julian Okwara (Ardrey Kell HS / Charlotte, NC) – just recently offered by Wake

#16 RB Tre Harbison (Crest HS / Shelby, NC) – TOP TARGET FOR WAKE

#17 ATH Thaddeus Moss (Victory Christian HS / Charlotte, NC) - just recently offered by Wake. Son of Randy Moss. Very likely a TE or DE at the college level.

#21 WR/RB Moe Neal (Forestview HS / Gastonia, NC) - TOP TARGET FOR WAKE

#23 RB Kennedy McCoy (North Davidson HS / Lexington, NC) – UNC and N.C. State are early leaders

#25 DT Christian Colon (Independence HS / Charlotte, NC) – I had considered him a top target for Wake until he was offered by Notre Dame.

#30 QB Jamie Newman (Graham HS / Graham, NC) – no Wake Forest offer yet because he is a QB. Likely on Coach R’s list of QBs that he will evaluate

#33 WR/ATH Derion Slade (West Forsyth HS / Clemmons, NC)

#35 RB Cade Carney (Davie HS / Mocksville, NC)


A few notes / thoughts:

I have been looking at some research that one of the posters on a premium UNC board has been doing. He has put in a lot of work into developing more advanced ratings for players (to replace the frustrating 2-star, 3-star system). One of my takeaways from looking at his work is that he thinks that the number of players in North Carolina that are roster-worthy at the Power 5 conference level is typically around 25 per year. After that he considers players to be borderline Power 5 conference prospects.

There are a lot of players from Charlotte-area and the Piedmont Triad area on the list and not many players from the Research Triangle area that Nyheim Hines proved again to be a very challenging place to recruit (although we did pull Kendall Hinton out of that area).

Since Rivals began ranking players in North Carolina in 1998, Wake Forest has landed commitments from only 3 players ranked in the top 20: AJ Marshall, Quan Rucker (#19 in 2009) and 2015 commit Lee Autry (#20)
 
I think our staff will eventually realize this on their own and start back heavily recruiting central and south Florida.

Recruiting is ripe for empirical analysis. Somebody with enough time and money could collect the mountains of data and probably figure out which recruiting territories offer the most bang for their buck.
 
What's interesting to me is the lack of names from Eastern North Carolina. Wake has traditionally done a pretty good job of finding good players from that area of the state, and recruiting services have typically done a poor job of scouting Eastern NC.
 
PhDeac said:
I think our staff will eventually realize this on their own and start back heavily recruiting central and south Florida.

Recruiting is ripe for empirical analysis. Somebody with enough time and money could collect the mountains of data and probably figure out which recruiting territories offer the most bang for their buck.
Click to expand...

I think that you are right that the staff will eventually be enticed to focus more heavily on the Orlando and Tampa areas. But keep in mind that the time spent recruiting targets that were too far away to make unofficial visits likely wasted much of that critical period in the spring where Clawson was undefeated at Wake Forest. I would think that the staff found this very, very frustrating and are trying to prevent that from happening again. They will also continue to get pressure from the fanbase/donor base to recruit North Carolina harder.

I think that we tend to over-estimate the impact that Florida recruiting had for Wake Forest. Of the top of your head, name the top performers on last year's team that came from Florida. Probably Bud Noel, Ziggy Allen and Ryan Janvion. Anyone else?
 
PhDeac said:
I think our staff will eventually realize this on their own and start back heavily recruiting central and south Florida.

Recruiting is ripe for empirical analysis. Somebody with enough time and money could collect the mountains of data and probably figure out which recruiting territories offer the most bang for their buck.
Click to expand...


How about you? Assume you have a few weeks of downtime right now.
 
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