After a little break, there's a little news to catch up, mostly from football.
First, a quick nugget from men's basketball. Dylan Swingle is a transfer from Duquesne who is a big man and has big potential. The assumption has been that he would have to sit out this year, per normal procedure. In fact, BG's press release announcing him said as much. However, in a Blade story Coach Huger said that there is still a possibility of a waiver for this year.
Speaking of waivers, there's been no public news on the Matt McDonald waiver. He had hired the same guy who repped Shea Patterson and Justin Fields...but then that guy a) quit the business and b) took a job with the NCAA.
In general, I don't think anyone knows what is going on with the waivers. Honestly, I understood for guys who had a sick mom back home, but if you're going to provide waivers in some of these cases, you might as well not have the year-in-residency rule, because all it yields this way is just another chance for the NCAA to apply arbitrary standards to people's lives.
Anyway.
BG also has some new verbals in football.
We'll go through them in reverse order, for my convenience.
Kaden Moore is a G from Freedom HS in Bethlehem, PA. He's 6'3" and 305 pounds, which is a pretty good-sized young man. He was second-team 6A All-State in PA, which is their large-school classification. For all that, BG was his only reported FBS offer, with others from Albany, Robert Morris and Towson. 247 doesn't have him ranked. Having said that, if you have confidence in your evaluation skills and your coaching ability, you can make big gains with a guy like this.
Next we have Anthony Hawkins of Mansfield.
He's a DT, at 6'1" and 285 pounds with an offer from Ball State. He had
54 tackles and 4 sacks in his junior year. He was
special mention all-state as well as
first-team all-district and all-conference.
Next is Brian Kilbane. He's from Lakewood St. Ed's, a legit state power with four state titles since 2010. He's a C/T, but seems that there's a consensus that he would be a D1 C, and he's 6'4" and 275 pounds. He had a veritable shload of offers, from Akron, Ball State, Buffalo, UC, Colorado State, UConn, EMU, Kent, Marshall, Ohio, UT, WMU and Youngstown State. He's also part of the legendary wrestling program at St. Ed's.
He was second-team all-district.
Lastly, we have Adrian Wilson, a WDE from Frankfort, IL. I assume that means the DE that rushes the passer. Anyway, he's 6'3 and 222, from Lincoln-Way East.
He had offers from Ball State, North Dakota State, South Dakota State and Yale and is a 2-star on 247. I don't see any season stats, but plenty of game reports show him with multiple sacks, etc.
That catches us up. And leaves BG with 26 commits, which is 1 more than the "initial counter" limit for the class. Coach Loeffler talked about this a while ago, and god help me, even with my high quality BG degree, I can't make heads nor tails out of it. It is salary-cap complicated. To the point where I don't necessarily want to be the kind of person who understands it.
SO. A couple thoughts. In the public, we operate only on the very surface of the recruiting process. There are entire Russian novels taking place every day. One of those verbals could be soft. They could be de-committed. We could be over-recruiting in case we lose some guys late, which does happen. There could be grey-shirting, but you're on your own as to what that means. Sometimes guys "commit" but as walk-ons. Who knows?
Here is what I can assure you. Our guys are on top of it. This is not the previous regime. I have been told that our recruiting room is operating at a Big-Ten level. This program may come back and it may not, but these guys know what they are doing.
FWIW, BG is #3 in the MAC in recruiting. One point on that. These 2-star and 3-star things are unreliable enough. But this number thing? Literally cannot be ground in reality. To prove the point, I looked at BG's top 20 "all-time" ranked recruits, from 247. How many all-MAC players would you expect out of that 20? Don't look ahead. How many?
The answer, is 2, right now. Some players are still going. But the answer is 2. How many players who contributed? 7. How many literally never suited up for BG or left without making an impact? 7.
17 players--top 20 less the 3 in this year's class.
2 All-MAC players
4-starters
1-Role player
3 - Left with little impact
4 Never played
1 Injured
2 Too soon
James Morgan 1--Left to find success, starter
Nilijah Ballew 2--Role player
Fred Coppet 3---3rd team All-MAC
Kendall Montgomery 4--Starter
Joshua Croslen 5--Left school
Cameron Stage 6--Too soon
Matt Schilz 8--Starter
Deandre Fitz-Henley 10- Played 4 games, moved to TE
Armani Posey 11--Played 9 games
D.J. Lynch 12--2nd team All-MAC
Mike Rogers 13--Never played
Darrion Landry 14--Never played
Erick Hallmon 16--Never played
Dylan Farrington 17--Never played
James Sanford 18--Starter
Rico Frye 19 - Injured
Karl Brooks 20--Showing promise
Names not on that list. Travis Greene, Matt Johnson, Ronnie Moore, Chris Jones, Ted Oulette, Scott Miller, Austin Valdez, Dominic Flewelly, Boo Boo Gates....etc.
Welcome to the Falcons, Kaden, Anthony, Brian and Adrian.
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