HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

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VimSince03
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HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by VimSince03 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:26 pm

https://twitter.com/BrianMacWriter/status/966027086329729025 The list includes a player (Matt Robinson) who didn't even sign with the Griz as a Top 40 recruit (he signed with Illinois).

Not really much analysis here as they rank based off 247Sports and how many offers each kid had. Once again, no Montana kids make the list because no rankings out there. I'm glad the FCS kids are getting exposure but I think there is a lack of detail going into making these lists. Every team has a list of players who signed on both signing days for the 2018 class (little research would be needed to get those lists). Yet, a player who didn't even sign with the Griz shows up on the ranking. My advice to Brian would be to STOP using 247Sports as your end-all, be-all ranking source. If the staff at HERO Sports is big enough, assign conferences to individual scouts then start building rankings from there.


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by VimSince03 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 1:42 pm

VimSince03 wrote:https://twitter.com/BrianMacWriter/status/966027086329729025 The list includes a player (Matt Robinson) who didn't even sign with the Griz as a Top 40 recruit (he signed with Illinois).

Not really much analysis here as they rank based off 247Sports and how many offers each kid had. Once again, no Montana kids make the list because no rankings out there. I'm glad the FCS kids are getting exposure but I think there is a lack of detail going into making these lists. Every team has a list of players who signed on both signing days for the 2018 class (little research would be needed to get those lists). Yet, a player who didn't even sign with the Griz shows up on the ranking. My advice to Brian would be to STOP using 247Sports as your end-all, be-all ranking source. If the staff at HERO Sports is big enough, assign conferences to individual scouts then start building rankings from there.
Robinson is now off the list. Update just happened.


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by DriscollCat » Tue Feb 20, 2018 3:14 pm

It is exciting though, that an unbiased observer found MSU to be at the top of the conference, a "loaded" conference at that!



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by iaafan » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:04 pm

It’s only his opinion and Vim points out the flaws in it, but 9 of the top 29 is good even if he’s wrong on almost half of that.



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by mslacatfan » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:11 pm

I would love to see a top 20 ranking/list (with a little blurb on each player), looking at just MSU and UM recruits combined. And not from Hero Sports, they don't know jack squat. It would be cool to see that from someone like Colter, who closely follows both programs/recruiting, and would be able to produce an educated top 20 list of recruits....

like vim said. A player like Gabe Sulser or Troy Andersen would NEVER make a top recruiting list from a place like Hero sports, when in all reality they are probably one of the better recruits in the whole conference.....


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by VimSince03 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:17 pm

Also, I don't want to sound like we didn't have a good recruiting class. We absolutely knocked it out of the park in many areas. I just think he needs to add more "what Brian thinks" to the list instead of just doing a ranking based on offers, quality of offer, and recruiting site rankings. Reason being is because 3-star to 0-star recruits gets very subjective as many 3-star players in these recruiting site databases only get a 3-star rating as they get higher offers during the recruiting season. In these systems, Montana kids are basically always going to be left out because of the "level of competition" bias, the "talent gap" bias, and lack of exposure all come into play. Simply put, I would like to know what HERO sports thinks about a recruit. Analyze why you gave the kid the #1 spot and not just base it off offers and rankings.

To be straightforward, I'm always looking at ways to improve the analysis that goes into my Montana kid rankings from year to year. Honestly, I thought I slacked on analysis this year. The reasons for why a kid was placed where he was were lacking in my opinion. I try to give some analysis when I do the shrine game breakdowns as usually every kid in the Top 50 is chosen for that game.


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by catatac » Tue Feb 20, 2018 4:53 pm

VimSince03 wrote:Also, I don't want to sound like we didn't have a good recruiting class. We absolutely knocked it out of the park in many areas. I just think he needs to add more "what Brian thinks" to the list instead of just doing a ranking based on offers, quality of offer, and recruiting site rankings. Reason being is because 3-star to 0-star recruits gets very subjective as many 3-star players in these recruiting site databases only get a 3-star rating as they get higher offers during the recruiting season. In these systems, Montana kids are basically always going to be left out because of the "level of competition" bias, the "talent gap" bias, and lack of exposure all come into play. Simply put, I would like to know what HERO sports thinks about a recruit. Analyze why you gave the kid the #1 spot and not just base it off offers and rankings.

To be straightforward, I'm always looking at ways to improve the analysis that goes into my Montana kid rankings from year to year. Honestly, I thought I slacked on analysis this year. The reasons for why a kid was placed where he was were lacking in my opinion. I try to give some analysis when I do the shrine game breakdowns as usually every kid in the Top 50 is chosen for that game.
Great post VIM, thanks. All in all I think the class looks promising, especially since Choate has already proven himself to be a great recruiter in my book. I say that because from his first two classes, there are already many major contributors in there and we didn't have to "wait for 3 or 4 or for years" to find out. \:D/

In some cases we found out within a few months the players he recruited were stars.

Lastly, I often hear how Montana is under recruited and the athletes don't get the proper recognition from the recruiting sites, etc. Question for anyone out there (VIM might have a good idea :D ). How many D1 caliber football players are out there per year from MT? I've heard people say about 5. I wonder what the numbers would look like if we looked back 10 or 20 years and counted the number of players that had successful D1 football careers. I'm guessing it's more than 5 but less than 10. Might be waaaaaaaay off, who knows.


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by VimSince03 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:04 pm

catatac wrote:
VimSince03 wrote:Also, I don't want to sound like we didn't have a good recruiting class. We absolutely knocked it out of the park in many areas. I just think he needs to add more "what Brian thinks" to the list instead of just doing a ranking based on offers, quality of offer, and recruiting site rankings. Reason being is because 3-star to 0-star recruits gets very subjective as many 3-star players in these recruiting site databases only get a 3-star rating as they get higher offers during the recruiting season. In these systems, Montana kids are basically always going to be left out because of the "level of competition" bias, the "talent gap" bias, and lack of exposure all come into play. Simply put, I would like to know what HERO sports thinks about a recruit. Analyze why you gave the kid the #1 spot and not just base it off offers and rankings.

To be straightforward, I'm always looking at ways to improve the analysis that goes into my Montana kid rankings from year to year. Honestly, I thought I slacked on analysis this year. The reasons for why a kid was placed where he was were lacking in my opinion. I try to give some analysis when I do the shrine game breakdowns as usually every kid in the Top 50 is chosen for that game.
Great post VIM, thanks. All in all I think the class looks promising, especially since Choate has already proven himself to be a great recruiter in my book. I say that because from his first two classes, there are already many major contributors in there and we didn't have to "wait for 3 or 4 or for years" to find out. \:D/

In some cases we found out within a few months the players he recruited were stars.

Lastly, I often hear how Montana is under recruited and the athletes don't get the proper recognition from the recruiting sites, etc. Question for anyone out there (VIM might have a good idea :D ). How many D1 caliber football players are out there per year from MT? I've heard people say about 5. I wonder what the numbers would look like if we looked back 10 or 20 years and counted the number of players that had successful D1 football careers. I'm guessing it's more than 5 but less than 10. Might be waaaaaaaay off, who knows.
I would say 5 is fair.


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by TomCat88 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:36 pm

It’s kinda like going to the horse races. You can figure out the good horses, but figuring out how they’ll finish the race is usually anyone’s guess. You can study the program all day, but it’s all luck from there. The best analysts in the world thought Tom Brady was the 199th best player coming out of college.

I like the shotgun approach. MSU did extremely well using that. Here it is visually if you just take the top 30:

MSU - 4,6,11,12,17,21,25,28,29.
EWU - 2,5,22,27.
UCD - 3,19,30.
SUU - 10,13,20.
WSU - 1,15.
UM - 7,16.
SAC - 18,24.
UNC - 9,26.
UND - 8.
C-P - 14.
ISU - 23.


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by PapaG » Tue Feb 20, 2018 5:55 pm

mslacatfan wrote:I would love to see a top 20 ranking/list (with a little blurb on each player), looking at just MSU and UM recruits combined. And not from Hero Sports, they don't know jack squat. It would be cool to see that from someone like Colter, who closely follows both programs/recruiting, and would be able to produce an educated top 20 list of recruits....

like vim said. A player like Gabe Sulser or Troy Andersen would NEVER make a top recruiting list from a place like Hero sports, when in all reality they are probably one of the better recruits in the whole conference.....
Saying Hero Sports "doesn't know jack squat" seems a bit much, doesn't it? They are using the rankings of a respected recruiting service, and yes the MT players are of course underlooked, but in terms of numbers it makes no sense for resources to be used on a state that primarily stocks the NAIA level over FCS and the rare FBS players.

Troy Andersen is an outlier who should be playing Pac 12 ball and I'd place him as a 4* player in retrospect, but only watching Gabe Sulser's highlights since I can't see him live, he seems tiny and FCS is probably the level he was meant to be at, meaning he wasn't going to get much attention playing against a bunch of slow AA players from Montana and not being on the camp circuit. 2-3* is probably where he should be, but it would be interesting to see how he fared in even Oregon 6A ball, where the athletes are bigger and even the small backs/WRs here mostly end up at FCS with a 2* ranking. I mean, the WA state Gatorade Player of the Year played for a traditional HS power in Bellevue and HE ended up at Montana State, and there are zero RBs like him as far as I can tell in Montana for the past how many years now?


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by MSU01 » Tue Feb 20, 2018 7:02 pm

I see there aren't any players from Idaho at all on this Top 40 list. Do they really not have anyone worthy of being included, or does the author of the article not realize that Idaho is now a Big Sky team? Also it appears that the main criteria for being ranked is how impressive the FBS offers you turned down are.



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by dayday » Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:09 pm

PapaG wrote:
mslacatfan wrote:I would love to see a top 20 ranking/list (with a little blurb on each player), looking at just MSU and UM recruits combined. And not from Hero Sports, they don't know jack squat. It would be cool to see that from someone like Colter, who closely follows both programs/recruiting, and would be able to produce an educated top 20 list of recruits....

like vim said. A player like Gabe Sulser or Troy Andersen would NEVER make a top recruiting list from a place like Hero sports, when in all reality they are probably one of the better recruits in the whole conference.....
Saying Hero Sports "doesn't know jack squat" seems a bit much, doesn't it? They are using the rankings of a respected recruiting service, and yes the MT players are of course underlooked, but in terms of numbers it makes no sense for resources to be used on a state that primarily stocks the NAIA level over FCS and the rare FBS players.

Troy Andersen is an outlier who should be playing Pac 12 ball and I'd place him as a 4* player in retrospect, but only watching Gabe Sulser's highlights since I can't see him live, he seems tiny and FCS is probably the level he was meant to be at, meaning he wasn't going to get much attention playing against a bunch of slow AA players from Montana and not being on the camp circuit. 2-3* is probably where he should be, but it would be interesting to see how he fared in even Oregon 6A ball, where the athletes are bigger and even the small backs/WRs here mostly end up at FCS with a 2* ranking. I mean, the WA state Gatorade Player of the Year played for a traditional HS power in Bellevue and HE ended up at Montana State, and there are zero RBs like him as far as I can tell in Montana for the past how many years now?
Yeah I guess biggest counter to lack of legitimacy is if you took Sulser and replaced him with a EWU's Stell that went to Rainer Beach who is ranked high on that list what would you have? I would argue Sulser is a more impressive receiver based off tape. Better ball skills, tough runner that breaks tackles, and similar speed and height. I think its cool he gives some of these kids and FCS schools recognition but yeah I think it should taken with a grain of salt. Brian does not watch much of the tape.



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by Cataholic » Tue Feb 20, 2018 8:52 pm

While Hero sports has some weaknesses with how they rank players, it is still quite an accomplishment for MSU to be listed at the top. As mentioned before, Hero is ranking kids based on their D1 offers. While some kids are not getting enough analysis from Hero (such as Montana kids), it is reasonable for a kid with ten Division 1 offers to be ranked higher than a kid with only one D1 offer. Basically, MSU has signed a large number of kids who were wanted by a number of D1 programs. That seems to be a pretty good basis for ranking a player.



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by Cataholic » Tue Feb 20, 2018 9:15 pm

This is also interesting when you look at the other conferences:

MSU led the Big Sky with 9 of the top 30.
NDSU led the MVFC with 10 of their top 30.
James Madison led the Colonial with 7 of the top 30.
Central Arkansas led the Southland with 7 of the top 30. Sam Houston only had 3 from the top 30.
Chattanooga led the Southern with 5 of the top 30.

It should be noted that many of these schools above have been successful due to the number of FBS transfers, most notably Sam Houston and James Madison. What is crazy is that MSU’s incoming transfers this year might be some of the best we have ever seen! Lastly, with the number of teams in the Big Sky, it is even more impressive how many MSU recruits ended up in the top 30.
Last edited by Cataholic on Wed Feb 21, 2018 8:30 am, edited 1 time in total.



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by kwcat » Tue Feb 20, 2018 11:05 pm




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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by iaafan » Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:22 am

According to Hero MSU beat Idaho on seven of the nine players it got on this list and only lost on three players. Fouch, Peacock and Smith.



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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by CelticCat » Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:40 am

How the heck did Weber land a 4 star kid who decomitted from UCLA and had plenty of other Pac12 suitors?


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by Hawks86 » Wed Feb 21, 2018 9:50 am

CelticCat wrote:How the heck did Weber land a 4 star kid who decomitted from UCLA and had plenty of other Pac12 suitors?
https://twitter.com/3DevonCooley/status/965279366698614784


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by Hawks86 » Wed Feb 21, 2018 10:59 am

https://twitter.com/MSUBobcats/status/966354066426159105


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Re: HERO Sports Top 40 2018 Big Sky Recruits

Post by VimSince03 » Wed Feb 21, 2018 11:02 am

Hawks86 wrote:https://twitter.com/MSUBobcats/status/966354066426159105
#1 and #2 were Princeton and Yale so technically we had the best recruiting class in the FCS according to 247Sports and HEROSports.


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