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Message: [QUOTE="tep624, post: 3912303, member: 430"] We should every single year be taking 1 above our quota on HS offensive linemen. It's our greatest opportunity to develop a quality 2 deep. Over the past 20 years we've done far better identifying developmental talent and targeting quality 3 star type prospects that maybe are a step too slow or an inch too short for the factories that become competent 3-4 years starters for us. Guys I think of here are Sean Hickey, Justin Pugh, Rob Trudo, Zach Chibane - most of the stalwarts of the Marrone era OL's were guys that were identified and developed and weren't 4 star prospects being chased by everyone and their grandmother. The challenge with going lean on HS OL recruiting is that if you run into issues with DQ's, or players not developing, etc, then you're competing with every other team out there that has a hole for a small pool of starter quality JUCO's and Grad Transfers. And not for nothing, excluding Koda Martin because he wouldn't have been here if not for his father being on the staff, outside of Bleich who was recruited hard out of the portal, I have to go back to the Marrone era to really find 2-3 year quality starters that came in as upperclassmen - Tiller and Hay from Nassau CC. We also got a year out of John Miller at C during Shafer's first year in 2013 (another Marrone era find). The 2016 class was really the start of our problems in this current era. 2016 - [B]Heckel[/B], [B]Servais[/B], [COLOR=rgb(226, 80, 65)][B]Clark (DQ), O'Sullivan (DQ) [/B](Noel Brouse and Cam DeGeorge Decommitted to UCONN after the coaching change)[/COLOR] [COLOR=rgb(0, 0, 0)]2017 - [B]Dakota Davis[/B], Patrick Davis 2018 - [/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(226, 80, 65)][B]Qadir White (Tr)[/B][/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(0, 0, 0)], [B]Carlos Vettorello, [/B]Willem Froumy [/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(226, 80, 65)](Tyrone Sampson's offer was pulled due to misconduct - would have been our starting C for 3 years)[/COLOR] [COLOR=rgb(0, 0, 0)]2019 - Anthony Red, [B]Matthew Bergeron[/B] 2020 - Garth Barclay, Josh Illoa 2021 - Austyn Kauhi, Wes Hoeh, Kalan Ellis, Tyler Magnuson, Enrique Cruz 2022 - ? JUCO's and Grad Transfers 2018 - [B]Koda Martin (GT)[/B] 2019 - Darius Tisdale (JUCO), [/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(226, 80, 65)][B]Ryan Alexander (GT)[/B][/COLOR] [COLOR=rgb(0, 0, 0)]2020 - [B]Chris Bleich (GT), [/B]Mark Petry (JUCO) 2021 - Jakob Bradford (JUCO) [/COLOR][COLOR=rgb(226, 80, 65)](Willie Tyler - GT from Texas decommitted to Louisiana - Monroe)[/COLOR] Guys bolded in black have proven to be starter quality, guys bolded in red left early and had very little impact on the program. [COLOR=rgb(0, 0, 0)]We had 4 classes in a row 2017-2020 where the highest number of HS recruits we took in a year was 3. That's literally insane. And we were lucky in that 6 of the 9 have served on the 2 deep, with Barclay and Froumy the only ones I believe that haven't yet. White was a major miss in terms of recruiting buzz and sheer impact - a lockdown LT would have made a bigtime impact on the quality of the line. You look at the list of JUCO's and GT's we have brought in during that period to plug gaps - none of them are real show stoppers outside of Martin and Bleich. Alexander was a complete disaster, Tisdale was the highest profile of the JUCO's and probably is a backup on the 2 deep on a healthy line at best. Which is fine if you have a healthy line - our biggest issue is that we didn't have enough quality starters to begin with and the most of the upperclassmen being brought in to plug those gaps were not of the quality to be able to do that as well. [/COLOR] [/QUOTE]

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