Needs for 2012 recruiting class?

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Jason Svoboda

Jason Svoboda

The Bird Level
Administrator
With the 2011 recruiting class now signed, sealed and delivered, where do you think we go with the 2012 class?

Our upcoming seniors include:

QB Fouch, Ronnie
QB Glass, Coy
FB Lough, Brock
WR Hilton, Justin
WR Egberongbe, Ednut
TE Jones, Alex
OL Geffert, Ben
OL Bichey, Corey
OL Borchers, Evan
OL Farha, Odeh
OL Smith, Mike
DL Hardy, Rod
DL Young, Lawrence
DL Scott, Jordan
DL Redwine, Milton
LB Cook, C.J.
LB Davis, Santino
LB Lewis, Marcus
DB Bettag, Alex
DB Carter, Larry
DB Easterly, Julian
DB Roberts, Ryan
DB Sewall, Alex
PK Sheldon, Brett
 

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Wow! Lots of names you hear a lot of. Hopefully, the staff was looking ahead to next year when recruiting this year, so when these guys leave, we'll have replacements who have already been in the system for a year...
 
Most of the guys who will be seniors in the fall.....

came to Indiana State when the program was in the midst of a nationally joked about losing streak. And look what they've done over the past three seasons.

Trent was new to the job and was recruiting late with a skeleton coaching staff, but he picked up guys like Ryan Roberts and Alex Sewell, among others. All those guys provided the foundation for where the program has progressed to now.

I really think something should be done next fall to honor these guys for re-establishing the program and getting Indiana State back in the football picture.
 
That's an interesting list--by my count there are 4 or 5 5th year seniors, and 7 that came in as transfers or walk ons after Coach Miles first recruiting class. That leaves 12 Seniors from the 31 kids in the first class (plus a few redshirts, including kids like Aaron Archie who was injured the first year). So the foundation is with the kids that were there when the first class arrived (Geffert, Carter..), and the first recruiting class kids (Archie, Sewall, Roberts, Lough, Borchers, Cook...). The real turnaround came with the top notch players (Fouch, Hilton, Lutz, Bell..) added to this group of high character kids that persevered and became the leaders of the pack. Tom, I agree that some special recognition of these kids would be great, but knowing them, they are just focused on what's ahead.
 
Yea, a lot of replacements but the great thing is we had a good recruiting class after these kids (obaseki lutz harris) and last year as well with Bell (and a ton of great players we haven't seen yet bc they were redshirted...this class is big, talented, and deep. I believe this fall will be the first year Miles has a fairly normally distributed team age wise. It will be about 2-3 more years before he has big classes that are 5th years...just imagine if we had half of our current seniors hanging around until 2012!! What I love is that we have a pipeline of top tier talent year after year now...wow look how far we've come and how our expectations have changed!
 
Back to the subject, here is what I see us needing to grab next cycle. Looking at the roster, I think we'll have to attempt to go the JUCO/transfer route at a couple positions to keep things going. We'll have quite a few questionmarks depending on how guys develop over the next year.

Quarterback (1-2)
After Glass and Fouch go, we'll only have Travis Johnson, Chris O'Leary and Trent Lancaster on the roster. I would like solid one high school prospect and possibly another FBS transfer if the right guy was available.

Runningback (1-2)
We've got a lot of underclass talent at the runningback spot and actually took 4 kids that can play RB in this past class. If they all stick there, focus on a couple top flight kids and hope to land at least one. If some of those other kids are moved, look to add a second.

Wide Receivers (2-3)
The only underclassman with any significant PT is Riston, so I'd love to see another JUCO kid brought in. Miles hit the jackpot with Hilton and there has to be another kid out there that would love to play in this offense. My only hope is he has Hilton's hands -- one can wish, right?

Tight End (1)
Losing Jones will be huge because he has shown he is a legit pass catching threat for us. Mardis is a solid TE, but he doesn't seem to get up the field as quick. Dikos and Buske are still unknown quantities at this point, so land a couple guys here to bolster the group.

Offensive Line (3-4)
In addition to losing the five above, Lutz, Passwater, Wood and Small will be juniors so that's 9 lineman lost in the next couple cycles. You win and die with your offensive/defensive lines so we should bring in another 3-4 guys to offset losses and make sure we have lots of bodies and lots of competition.

Defensive Line (3-4)
Echo what I said about the offensive line. In addition to the guys above, Obaseki will be a senior next cycle. It is imperative to get a couple top flight guys to keep the defense moving in the right direction.

Linebacker (3-4)
If we continue to stay in the 3-4 scheme, it will be imperative to bring in a nice stable of linebackers every year. Additionally, of all the spots on our roster, it's one where you could see how vunerable we were when our starters went down last year.

Defensive Backs (3-4)
We took a lot of guys that can play in the secondary this past class, so I'm not placing this as a huge need. We'll have 15 guys with freshman or sophomore eligibility.

Special Teams (0-1)
Lots of young legs on the roster. Unless you have someone willing to walk-on, I say you don't need to look for a kicker/punter. If anything, you may look for an elite long snapper, because those guys are often not offered FBS scholarships and it is amazing how much time those guys can add to a kick/punt.
 

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We need a monster up front...on both sides of the ball...I would like to see us bring in at least 2 young QBs...I think after Fouch leaves it is O Leary's Job to lose...his athleticism and arm strength take us to another level.
 
Find a qb that can do what fouch can, and improve the o-line, stay healthy, and get people who like to hit people hard on the defensive side of the ball.
 

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After some recent losses, I'd bump up my offensive/defensive line counts. Also after reading the Phil Steele mag, we need help in special teams badly. Didn't realize how bad we were there last year.
 
Jason Svoboda said:
After some recent losses, I'd bump up my offensive/defensive line counts. Also after reading the Phil Steele mag, we need help in special teams badly. Didn't realize how bad we were there last year.
Click to expand...
Double the concern for offensive line after the losses and now what has come out of the Blue-White scrimmage. Those offseason losses have really hurt. We need to looooooad up at OL this class.
 
We've had some time to see what we've got and I think we've got to put an emphasis on the offensive and defensive lines as well as the cornerback position. What does everyone else think?
 

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Need to always recruit 5 good o-linemen...but at least 2 seasoned ones for next year. Our pipeline looks good, but still too young. Also another seasoned QB, maybe a few taller corners. D-Line...yea a few wouldn't hurt. We'll lose some lb's too. Need to replenish that as well. Another feature back to red-shirt then play some Shakir's last season. Add in a safety to back up Donovan Layne for next year...and oh yea. Another kicker...how many years are we going to have to say that? Tanner will be fine but let's hope our FB doesn't have to kick if he's injured.
 
Keep recruiting the lines. We have a lot to replace on both lines in the next couple of years. We have 2, possible 3 QBs on the roster, but no proven QB; I'd keep looking there. We'll need to replace all of the LBs in the next 2 years--Walker and Allen should fill in nicely, but you clearly need to have depth at that position, as last year showed. I'm more worried about RB than almost any position; Harris got banged up yesterday, and I think he is the only quality backup to Bell that we have. Lough will be hard to replace. I think we are in pretty good shape at DB, although we do need bigger, more physical corners. There are plenty of good looking freshmen DBs redshirting this year. Kicking and punting--yes, we need recruits. We've been very lucky to find an excellent punter on the baseball field, and time will tell if Tanner will be the answer placekicking. He has certainly been an upgrade (for the most part) on kickoffs, but consistency is needed. I have no idea if he's being recruited or has any interest in football beyond high school, but our local HS had an interesting find this year. They dragged a kid off the tennis court to try out as a placekicker to fix a problem area, and in 2 consecutive weeks he hit 47 and 52 yard FGs with no time left to save the teams playoff life. He's worth talking to.
 
We also have quite a few young Olinemen, some big boys by the looks of it. Hopefully they develop well and that is not an area of concern.

We definitely could use some depth/competition at DT and QB and in the secondary, but you never know how things are going to play out and who will grow and develop.
 
The biggest need that we are going to have will be at quarterback no doubt. I was watching the Notre Dame game last weekend and the announcers were discussing the fact that Dayne Crist has one year left of eligibility and is sitting behind a young quarter back in Tommy Rees and that his best chances were to transfer out to an FCS school where he could start right away. I realize he is from California which would probably make it a little bit harder to sell but I say why not go after him. He would walk in to a situation where he has the best FCS running back in the nation on his team and a team that has shown it can compete. Plus Dayne could give us a one year stopgap to give some of our younger guys time to develop and learn the system a little better.
 
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