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Joined: Jan 2013
I know it's only July, but is it time to get concerned about the lack of commitments in the Class of 2015 yet? I count just five (Folau, Farrar, Manu, Chaffin, Wilson), whereas there might be a total of 18-20 spots in the class. Right now, we have fewer commitments than every other Pac-12 school, and are several behind the other top Pac-12 teams (UCLA has 11, and Oregon, ASU, and USC have 12--Arizona leads the way with 17, but I wouldn't call them a "top" team). I know that Stanford hasn't always led the way with the number of committed recruits early in the process, but it seems as if we're lagging behind our conference brethren more so than usual.Â
But whereas we'd need another 13-15 guys to complete the class, we only have about 10 guys for whom we're either the top choice or among the top choices (for these purposes, I'm not counting guys who may have expressed some interest in us but list other schools as stronger favorites, such as a guy putting us as "Warm" on 247 but behind a couple of other schools at "Warmer"). My list of guys where we've offered scholarships and have a high degree of mutual interest (defined as either among a prospect's Top 5 list or listed as one of the prospect's preferred schools on 247) is as follows: Canton Kaumatule, Frank Buncom IV, Equanimeous St. Brown, Trent Irwin, Cameron Scarlett, Bryce Love, Osa Masina, Henry Roberts, and Jordan Fox. That's just nine guys. Adding Wimbush gets us to 10.  So we'd basically need to sweep all currently highly interested targets (crazy unlikely), suffer no decommitments (somewhat unlikely), and get every last target through the admissions process (simply will not happen).
(Assumptions: (1) the 12 5th-year seniors listed on the current roster are all on scholarship for this year, or else they would have left following their academic senior year; (2) in addition to the 3 academic seniors who will have exhausted eligibility (Ty Montgomery, Jordan Richards, and James Vaughters), additional academic seniors who could take a 5th year may choose not to do so (maybe Kevin Anderson or Kevin Hogan with monster years, or Wayne Lyons if he chooses not to seek a medical waiver for a 5th year); (3) we will lose at least one academic junior (Andrus Peat) to the draft; (4) we will lose at least one scholarship player to a medical retirement; (5) we will not invite back a couple of seniors for 5th years. That's a minimum of 16 departures, with a few more likely from retirements, early entries, etc. I acknowledge that there are potential deficiencies in my assumptions (for example, I'm not sure that John Flacco, Eddie Plantaric, and Jeff Trojan are on scholarship, even though they're 5th-year seniors), but the point remains the same--there look to be more openings in the class than we have interested, highly-ranked targets to fill them.) Â
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So what's next? One would expect that we'd land a good number (but not all) of the kids where we're a top choice, and that we might well flip a kid currently committed to another school once the fat envelope arrives (even in addition to Wimbush). But unfortunately, we just don't seem to be very high on enough top recruits' lists, so we'll likely have to fill out the class with more high 2-star guys and low 3-star guys than we've been used to these past few years. Not the end of the world, certainly, but not the rarefied air we've been breathing the last few years, either.Â
Is it just too early to be concerned about this yet? Are there other highly-rated prospects that I'm just missing? Anyone have good information on the likelihood of certain players to leave early? If I'm being unduly pessimistic, please set me straight!
