The Most Consistent Recruiting Programs

A week ago, InterMat’s Class of 2024 recruiting rankings were released. They say the only things in life that are guaranteed are “death and taxes.” Right up there could be Ohio State in the top ten in recruiting rankings. Tom Ryan’s team is the only one in the country that has cracked the top-ten in InterMat recruiting rankings for each of the last four years. The Buckeyes are one of only seven teams to make the top-25 during all four of those years measured, as well. The 2024 Ohio State recruiting class came in at #5 which is the same ranking they held during the 2023 season. In 2022, the Buckeye had an incredible class that was ranked top in the nation. Their lowest ranking during this span came in 2021 when they were ranked ninth. Extrapolating the data even further, if you used MatScouts rankings prior to the InterMat sale (2021), you have to look back to 2009 to find an Ohio State class that was ranked outside of the top ten. Of course, 2009 is the year before current Ohio State assistant coach Logan Stieber was a high school senior and another assistant, J Jaggers won the second of his two NCAA titles. In addition to Ryan, Stieber, Jaggers, and assistant coach Bo Jordan, Ohio State is also helped by the presence of recruiting coordinator Anthony Ralph. Ralph was an assistant coach at Ohio State from 2016-18 and then was moved into his current position to focus solely on recruiting. The first full year that Ralph was in his current role the Buckeyes inked the top-ranked recruiting class in the land. He would add a second #1 class three years later in 2022. During Ralph’s time as the recruiting coordinator, only Oklahoma State and Penn State have been able to sign #1 overall classes. Looking at recruiting on an individual basis, Ohio State has managed to sign top-five recruits in each of the last four classes. In total, six top-five recruits have signed with the Buckeyes during that span. The fact that Ohio State typically identifies and locks down a few top-flight recruits per year, rather than large classes with ten top-100 recruits, helps maintain consistency with recruiting and recruiting rankings. Financially, it’s difficult to continue to stack multiple classes with nine and ten ranked recruits on top of each other (Of course, with changes to college athletics on the horizon and potential scholarship opportunities rising for power five schools, maybe this will be a thing of the past). Earlier we mentioned that Ohio State is one of only seven teams to make InterMat’s top-25. Iowa, Iowa State, Oklahoma State, NC State, Nebraska, and Virginia Tech are the other teams who have appeared in the recruiting rankings in all four years. The big elephant in the room regarding that list is Penn State. They missed out on a spot in the recruiting rankings in 2022 (MatScouts had them at 22). In those other three years, Penn State has signed two #1 overall classes and a #3 - so they are doing everything right on the recruiting front. We could do an entire study about all of the positives regarding recruiting from the Nittany Lion staff. Other notables that are not in this group include Cornell, Michigan, and Missouri. Cornell also missed the rankings in 2022, but has two top-five classes in four years. They tend to have a big year followed by a smaller class. Missouri is similar. Michigan actually missed the top-25 twice in the last four years - hence the need for some transfers. Taking a glance ahead to the Class of 2025, Ohio State has commitments from the #8 (Vince Bouzakis) and #15 (Maddox Shaw) overall recruits. That fits in with their pattern of smaller, but star-studded recruiting classes and potentially puts them in line to have, yet another, top-ten class. This current run of recruiting could put Ohio State back into the realm of a consistent team title challenger status they held from 2015-19 when they were in the top-three every year with a team title and three runner-up finishes.

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The Most Consistent Recruiting Programs

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