Well, ol' timey Coug football is back!!!
- Thread starter BleedCrimsonandGray
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By "not trying" I meant specifically not investing scholarships in the position. And they decided to recruit DEs and grow them into DTs. That's what most WSU coaches would try to do. Fehoko was 6'1, 245, Mattox was 6'3, 250. Bartley was 6'4, 240, Bender 6'4, 225, McBroom 6'3, 260. Brennan was 6'4, 238, Pei was 6'3, 260. These guys were plenty big enough to grow into DTs. I have no doubt, you would have heaped praise on Wulff if that worked out with any of his undersized line recruits.
And why weren't they able to keep brining in Gautas, Barbers, Vaeaeos or Ekuales? Hmm, how could that be? Can't think of anything those guys have in common.
And again, classifying recruiting as having "fallen off" after '13 is disingenuous and you know it. Yea, why didn't Leach just continue to recruit arguably the best classes in recent program history every year? I pointed out the '14 & '15 classes were quite good. They weren't '13, no. I guess that would be one way to look at it.
I hear you on that and have had similar thoughts. Recruiting to WSU for basketball is harder than football in some ways. Non-P6 programs are more significant competition. WSU's facilities and budget for basketball are weaker than for football.
Basketball also is "easier," and certainly simpler, though, just due to the smaller numbers and differences in the game. You're usually recruiting 2 to 4 players a year, not 25 or more, so you're focused on a much smaller set of recruits. Landing even one or two differencemakers can change your team greatly, unlike football. The playing time picture is simpler. It's simpler, if not necessarily easier, to get a kid drafted. Smith lands one great player from Africa, he is drafted after a couple years, and now he has a rep for doing so that lets him land the next guy. There seem to be more players in various cracks out there to be had, such as players reclassifying their class years, and there is a lot more moderately developed talent internationally for basketball than football. There's more money at issue and, while I can't quantify this, fewer inefficiencies to be exploited in football.
To be clear, though, Smith's work has been incredibly good, especially with the facilities and budget pictures and the state of the program when he arrived, and it shows that it's possible to recruit to Pullman. Can't disagree with that.
For football, like basketball, the core of the team will always have to come from California, but I would like to see increased focus on getting players in less efficient marketplaces, like the islands, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.
It's so hard to recruit places like Australia and New Zealand though. WSU can't afford to fly a coach out there for in home visits. You're going to spend that money, time and resources to land, maybe 1 kid? And who are your high school contacts out there? Even the Islands, which I think everyone would consider a success "only" got WSU about 2 kids a year and that was only because we had Joe.
It's not hard. Get the bulk of your guys from CA, land 3 or 4 in state kids, get a couple guys from the Islands if you have that connection on your staff, then maybe you get a couple kids from elsewhere.
No need to reinvent the wheel, just invest your money where the results come from.
I expected to be consistently pulling some guys out of Hawaii and Samoa. Not necessarily the return of Big Joe, but better than Fa'amoe in 2020, and Stribling and Mauigoa in 2021.
The Barber case exposed a lot of the institutional woke racism by school bureaucrats.
Quite a few of today's "Vax or else" crowd saw Barber's expulsion as way to score points at the time.
Well...the 14 class was horrible. Not sure we can even debate that, can we?
Also, not sure I would say the best class in school history, but it was very good. And here is the rub---we all wondered what an experience coach with a high caliber resume would mean for WSU. Would it be fair to say that with each bowl game stacked upon another bowl game our recruiting would get better and better? Yet it did not. Leach's best two classes we 12 and 13, the foundation for the following 5 years. 2014 was (ok I won't say disaster because I don't want Tron or his alter ego Etown to jump in with their nonsense) not even close to the standards set in 2012 and 2013. I think if you even went back to Wulff's 3rd class and Leach's 3rd class is there any debate who had a better recruiting class?
So we are in agreement, that 2013 was Leach's best class, and the remaining classes were not of that quality. Your position seems to be that class was a highly successful class and should not be the standard of which Leach and staff should be held, and I may agree with you that despite any consistency in winning and in bowl games that really does correlate to better or equal recruits.
I mean, that class did have 3 NFL players in it. Other than that, yes, it was a thin class. A coach can probably survive a class like that every few years.
Again, Leach probably could have if we would've been able to keep Harrel, Mastro, Manning, Joe, Wilson. Hard to sustain recruiting momentum when you have essentially an entirely new coaching staff over the course of 3 years. Recruiting is hard for schools that don't have an unlimited pool of money.
I still don't really see what the point of cherry picking classes for comparisons is. And it's not like Wulff's staff was going in and "winning" recruiting battles. I'd put that '10 class in the "blind squirrel" category. Give a guy a Pac12 polo shirt, and enough scholarships to dole out and he's going to stumble on a Deone or Marquess every once in a while.
Again, the entire staff was replaced. Only common theme was the head coach. Comparing the '13 and '19 classes is practically apples and oranges.
And the success those guys had has now been reduced to pulling and whiffing on blocks and letting your QB get destroyed from the blind side in the end zone. We consistently had one of the better o-lines in the conference the last 5 years of Leach and he left that cupboard mighty full. It’s astounding how much of a shitshow the OLine has become in a short amount of time.
If you are asking kids to do what they are not good at you are a shitty coach. You have to put kids in a position to be successful.
My contention is the 13 class was Leach's high point. I am not sure you are arguing it wasn't. So if that is the case you and I are in total agreement. It seems to be your position that Leach despite his resume and success, that should have been the pinnacle of his recruiting classes, and that my expectations of that being the relative norm or better classes coming as he had more success is unrealistic.
Why do I compare class three with class three? Because both coaches had their systems implemented, Leach had success, and having three players contribute from 2014 is a bad class any way you slice it. And it is not accurate to say it was because he lost his main recruiters. Joe picked up great players in 13. Wilson, Simmons etc. 14 was a bad bad class anyway you slice it. Can you survive that class? Sure if you fill the holes it created at DT for example, but we did not. So I do compare year three and three, and it gives us a sense where recruiting was trending for Leach I believe, for whatever the reason.
2015 had functional DB's in it. Again no big bodies up front on the Dline. And on the oline they were 0-5. Not sure what happened that year. In 2014 they recruited 3 olineman. Dillard, Evers and Krepsz....In 8 attempts, they got one to play between 14 and 15. I am not saying they didn't try, I am saying with Leach's tenure, experience, wins, success, bowl games I would have hoped it would have translated to more.
Maybe what it does show me is that despite having a top 15 coach in the country, new facilities and bowl game stacked onto a bowl game, it doesn't remotely translate into recruiting success, which is something I hoped for.
No, you picked year 3 because it is the only class that comes close to proving whatever point you're trying to make. Every other class, year 1, 2, 4...not close. Wulff lucked out in '10.
Yup, only got one guy in '14, albeit a first round NFL draft pick. Missed badly in '15. Then back to it with Mauigoa, Watson & Liam Ryan in '16, then Lucas the following year.
I think what you're proving here is recruiting is hard and looks increasingly sporadic when you try to break it down year by year and position by position. A coach goes 1-7 a couple years in a row, then hits 3 the next year. Weird, huh?
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First year three is picked not because wulff got lucky , but year one isn’t a recruiting cycle . They literally didn’t get a chance, wulff or leach to get a full year of evaluation in . The second year they are getting their feet on the ground, and third year recruiting should have picked up for both coaches. The plan is in place, you have fine tuned your recruiting approach etc.
Hey if a coach goes 1-7 at the receiver position no big deal . They do that along either line you are now playing catch up .
But not really sure what you disagree with concerning my initial post . I said 2013 was by far the high point in his recruiting and you seem to agree with me .
You had me until you blew off his failures to recruit QB's. He's always been better at coaching upperclassmen but it's hard to defend where the QB position was in 2020 and that's 100% Leach. You can say that he would have brought in a gun to fill the role but that doesn't hide the fact that Hilinski is the only HS guy that he offered a scholarship to who looked like he was a worthy successor. We'll never know how Cruz or Cooper would have done, but the evidence doesn't make it look like they were different.
Well, deLaura was a Leach recruit. I think between him and another year with Gunner Cruz, we would’ve been fine at the position
Leach has a pretty long track record of getting QB1 game ready. Had Leach left after 2017 or 2018 there would be complaints about how the cupboards were bare. He figured it out. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Absolutely if he would stayed he would have been more creative with the transfer portal . Not sure that they would have been world beater, but he would patched together a watchable product.
Actually starting to think him leaving was lose/lose for both WSU and Ms State. I think he is finding what most living in the South already knew is Miss. St. fans are weird and very impatient. Personally think he might have a little success there if given time, but really don't think that they will give him enough.
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