Recruiting

[Wrestleknownothing]

With regard to recruiting I took a look at Willie's Big Board data and tortured the numbers until they spoke. Rather than post this in the thread that got me to thinking about it, I decided to start a new one here.

After playing around with the data a bit I realized that simply averaging the rankings was misleading. The key to success is stringing together top recruiting classes. So if you lay an egg in there it is not a big deal. It is really about nailing it two or three times in a four year window.

A good Iowa example of this is that they had their best recruiting classes in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 followed by a title in 2021. On the PSU side from 2020 to 2023 they went 7, 1, 22, 2 and we all know how that ended. As for that 22, it was because they had a single recruit. But that single recruit was Levi Haines, so...

Ultimately, I settled on averaging the best three out of four classes for rolling four year windows from 2012 to 2023. Then I determined who had the top 3 classes for those windows.

The results:

• Clearly PSU rules the roost on the recruiting trail. Five times they had the best series of recruiting classes (red) and twice they had the second best (blue).
• Iowa is mostly third best (green), but overall I would put them behind Oklahoma State, Ohio State, and Cornell.
• That Iowa tends to outperform three of the four schools in front of them has to be an endorsement of their coaching at the same time it is a mild indictment of their recruiting.
• Oklahoma State suffers the opposite malady. Results that do not live up to their recruiting ranks.
• Ultimately these recruiting ranks will need to be updated for transfers. Michigan's ranking ending with 2023 probably moves to around fourth from seventh, for example. Maybe even third.
• I cheated a bit on ties.