Full class doesn’t equal 25 per year. Pelini and Riley has difficulty getting to 85 going into the summer. That is different than getting 25. They were rarely in position to get to 25 in a class because they didn’t process players and redshirted large portions of every class.
Wisconsin recruits and manages their roster similarly in that they rarely have large classes because the redshirt large portions of every class and don’t really process underperforming players.
It’s simple math. You can only have 85 on scholarship and if you are spreading that number over 5 years, your base class is going to be 17. When you add in scholarships that are left open for deserving walk ons and you don’t process out players at a very high level, it is difficult to get to 20, let alone 25. When you are only signing 17-21 players per class, you aren’t going to have top 15 classes very often, especially when you recruit like Wisconsin does.