Im not sure why people believe we’ll be unreal in two years and beyond. We don’t have anybody coming in that is a sure thing all American type recruit. This year we’ll be very down but it’s expected and next year Suriano hopefully comes back, but after that it’s really a toss up and the team will really have to live up to expectations that I don’t think they deserve based on recruit rankings. Still very skeptical on future outlook and hopefully this year some of the young guys step up but you have to prove it first
Based on recruiting rankings we went unranked in 3 of the past five years which is tough but the new facilities and recent successes should help as evidenced by the #4 class this past year and a good class shaping up in 2020. Based on recruiting/not factoring in development here is where we stand:
125- Nic Aguilar #85 2018
133- Sammy Alvarez #34
141- JoJo Aragona #6
149- Ryan Vulakh #26
157- Robert Kanniard #64
165-
174- Jackson Turley #43
184- Billy Janzer #65 2018
197- Kyle Lightner #69 2018
285-
Looking at just the past two classes, recruiting has been fine. Think about it, there are 80 AA’s each year. You would think a recruit ranked in the 60’s and below has at least a decent shot at NQ several years and AA at least one year assuming good development. We used to lack training partners for these guys to really develop but now we have Downey to help the upper weights, Donny, Ashnault, Meredith in the middle and Graf for the lightweights. Plus Reece. This should help the young guys improve much faster. I think this explains a lot of the optimism plus we have a really good upperweight in Poznanski plus several other excellent recruits coming in in 2020. Do we have the elite talent of OSU or PSU, no but many of the guys above have close to elite talent. I, for one, am very optimistic. AJ Ferrari is at such a weight of need that that would of course be a game changer. But, I’m not going to be crushed if he goes elsewhere.