Do you have a post of the tendencies you've noticed in our coach's recruiting tactics? You mentioned this, plus the one about following a Duke offer above. Anything else we do on a regular basis?
The best way to answer your question is to provide some observations from the last recruiting cycle. I divided the last cycle into what I refer to as phases below. I am obviously layering in some personal opinions and speculation, so PLEASE take that into consideration (and don’t shoot me for it!). Note that I expect this year to be different from last year. Earlier start. They have the benefit of last July's underclassman camp. Smaller class. New recruiting territory. Opportunity to apply lessons learned from the previous cycle.
Phase 1: Offer most 4-star and 5-star players in the eastern half of the country (January to March 2014)
This seems like a low-cost, potentially high-reward process. Chances may not be high that 4-star and 5-star guys will show interest or visit Wake Forest on their own, but those chances are zero if they don’t have an offer. So a verbal offer gets thrown out. In my opinion, these offers seem “safe” from the standpoint that the players have been vetted in camps and presumably by the coaching staffs of schools that have already offered. And the time investment involved may not be as high as you might think. I am not sure whether or not this process started the relationship with Quarvez Boulware. Other than potentially Quarvez, it doesn’t look like this process yielded any return last year.
Phase 2: Identify and offer your top (realistic) 3-star targets, begin to develop relationships with them early, and encourage them to attend Junior Day (January to March 2014)
This phase had some things that worked well and some things that didn’t, but the net result was REALLY positive and the foundation for the top portion of the class was built here.
What worked well: When the staff got after a recruit early the results were often really good. Junior Day was a HUGE success in my opinion because it established a bond with future commits
T.J. Haney, Dionte Austin, Paris Black, Amari Henderson (technically spring game visit, not Junior Day) and
Lee Autry. Some other notable names that attended were JJ Arcega-Whiteside, Lawrence Cager and Kengera Daniel. However, it should be noted that this phase was also successful because the staff got a little more aggressive in making early offers further down the ratings scale (presumably) after they had established their own comfort level with specific recruits by spending time with them during the visit.
What didn’t work well: Here is where the interesting discussion comes because it involves the question of recruiting territory. One side of the debate would point to the fact that a number of top targets were identified in Texas, and the results were not good. Critical time and effort were invested in these recruits. Then they didn’t come to Junior Day. Then they didn’t visit after the school year. Then they committed to other schools. Not good. However, the other side of the debate would point out that this phase also laid the groundwork for eventual commits
Jake Bargas and
Steven Claude (two of our highest rated recruits that were offered very early in the process and also were not able to travel to events like Junior Day).
Phase 3: Make in-person offers during spring evaluation period (April 15 – May 31)
I honestly don’t know what happened here. I would love to be able to get some insight from the staff on this topic. Here is what I do know, the staff hit the road for 5-6 consecutive weeks and made a TON of offers. Those offers were more aggressive and went further down the ratings scale (i.e. a lot of “lower” 3-stars). My PERCEPTION was that some of the offers chased behind offers from certain other schools. For example, I wrote at the time about a player in South Carolina that we offered the day after a report that he had been offered by Stanford. The Stanford offer report later turned out to be bogus. In reality, the timing of our offer could have been coincidental. However, it also could have been that the staff had evaluated and liked certain recruits, but didn’t want to be the first to offer for whatever reason (?!).
This phase should have put in place backup plans in case we didn’t land our top targets, but in many cases that didn’t materialize. In a few cases it worked that way (
Justin Strnad, Chris Calhoun and ultimately
Scotty Washington). But in a number of other cases the backup plan clearly became the Clawson camp as opposed to the many, many offers made here. Why was that? Geography was probably a factor here again (i.e. more Texas offers). Maybe there were some academic issues with the offerees? Or buyer’s remorse (i.e. further evaluation left the staff unenthused)? Or they couldn’t get traction with these recruits without having developed relationships earlier? Maybe the staff wanted to make sure that they had a lot of scholarships available for Clawson camp? Whatever the reason, not a lot came out of the offers made during this time. Relatively few visits. Relatively few commits. Interestingly, a number of the recruits offered during this period remain uncommitted today. The lack of a “middle layer” of commits from this phase is why our class has relatively distinct top and bottom groups from a ratings perspective.
Phase IV: The Clawson Camp
Here is where the staff got SUPER-AGGRESSIVE with offers if a recruit met their height/weight requirements for a position and did well in the combine tests. They were not afraid to offer recruits with less than impressive film, offer lists, or ratings. They obviously place a high value on the in-person evals that they get through this process. This phase would ultimately lead to commits from under the radar guys like
Andrew Rector, Phil Haynes, Jake Benzinger, Christian Matthew, Alex Bachman and Nate Mays. It should also be noted that
Dior Johnson came through this process. He was on a tour of camps in North Carolina that his coaches organized and is an obvious exception to some of the statements above.