Anyone up for some micro & macro analysis of how things have gone in the MSU recruiting war room?
The following is the topper portion of our Class of 2013 analysis as part of our annual Four-Year Recruiting Review in the print version of SPARTAN Magazine.
In this week's issue of the magazine, we analyze MSU's 2013 and 2014 recruiting classes. In the next edition of the magazine, we will analyze the 2012 and 2011 classes. We've been doing this every year since the mid-90s.
I've been putting this together over the last few days. Wanted to have it done prior to the Chicago trip, but I got too involved in some of the retrospective analysis.
Following this intro, we go over every player in the class on an individual basis, how they played in the spring, and what they're facing heading into camp. That part of the Review is not included here. Wouldn't have the space to paste it all.
Here's the topper/intro:
(I haven't sent it to our proof reader yet. So some of it might be a little sloppy):
FOUR-YEAR RECRUITING REVIEW: CLASS OF 2013
2013 RIVALS.COM RECRUITING RANKINGS
1. Ohio State (2)
2. Michigan (5)
3. Nebraska (17)
4. Indiana (38)
5. Michigan State (40)
6. Penn State (43)
7. Illinois (47)
T-8. Northwestern (53)
T-8. Iowa (53)
10. Purdue (56)
11. Wisconsin (57)
12. Minnesota (61)
(National ranking in parentheses).
CLASS OF 2013 TIER BREAKDOWN
UPPER TIER
Jon Reschke
Damion Terry
Dennis Finley
Delton Williams
MIDDLE TIER
Dylan Chmura
Demetrious Cooper
Darian Hicks
Gerald Holmes
Trey Kilgore
Jalyn Powell
Devyn Salmon
RJ Shelton
Justin Williams
Noah Jones
LOWER TIER
None
KICKERS & CANADIANS
Michael Geiger
James Bodanis
main headline:
SLOW TO IMPRESS
Attrition Beginning to Hit Thin Class
CLASS OF 2013 AT A GLANCE
Has nailed down starting job (1): PK Michael Geiger.
Has started in the past (2): CB Darian Hicks, WR RJ Shelton.
Projected starter for 2015 (1): Geiger.
Possible starter for 2015 (4): DE Demetrius Cooper, RB Gerald Holmes, Shelton, RB Delton Williams
Projected in the two-deep for 2015 (9): Cooper, LT Dennis Finley, Hicks, Holmes, LB Jon Reschke, C Devyn Salmon, QB Damion Terry, Shelton, Williams.
Projected reserves 2015 (4): Dylan Chmura, Shane Jones, Trey Kilgore, Justin Williams.
Will fail to earn two letters/no longer in the program (4): James Bodanis, Noah Jones, Jalyn Powell.
This is the first of our annual two-part series, profiling Michigan State’s last four recruiting classes and judging the attrition rate, success of Spartan recruiting as well as the ranking accuracy of national recruiting analysts. Judging the success of a recruiting class and accuracy of national analysts usually becomes more clear three and four years after the class has signed. But these early reviews of the ’13 and ’14 classes provide an indication of where those groups are headed and the impact they could have on Michigan State in the near future. We will profile the 2011 and 2012 classes in the next issue of SPARTAN Magazine.
BY JIM COMPARONI AND PAUL KONYNDYK
We have an attrition alert within the program.
After several strong, efficient years of evaluation, development and recruiting for Mark Dantonio’s Michigan State Spartans, the Class of 2013 is at risk to becoming his second recruiting class to have a bust rate of greater than 33 percent and possibly the highest non-starter rate of any Dantonio class.
Secondly, there is a stark lack of star power in this class. Only three players were listed as starters or co-starters in the official preseason depth chart MSU released at Big Ten Media Days - wide receiver RJ Shelton, tailback Gerald Holmes and cornerback Darian Hicks. It’s conceivable that none of those three players will start this season.
Only three others from the Class of 2013 are listed in the two deep - defensive end Demetrious Cooper, Mike linebacker Shane Jones and offensive tackle Dennis Finley. Cooper is the only player of those three regarded as being a strong candidate for consistent playing time in 2015. Finley and Jones are suspect.
By comparison, the class that is one year younger than these guys, the Class of 2014, has three players in the starting lineup: safety Montae Nicholson, offensive guard Brian Allen and defensive tackle Malik McDowell.
It’s difficult to get a completely accurate read on which players will become starters two-and-a-half years into a college career, but the Class of 2013 is low on first-stringers and strangely low on second-stringers at this stage.
Nine of the 17 players in this class are listed as third stringers or lower, or are out of the program altogether. Of those, quarterback Damion Terry and linebacker Jon Reschke are solid candidates to rise to a level of prominence at some point, and it’s too early to get a read on tight end Dylan Chmura, but the others - WR Trey Kilgore, C Devyn Salmon, CB Justin Williams - haven’t provided any indication of being able to climb the depth chart. Three others are no longer with the program: DL/OL James Bodanis, LB Jalyn Powell and DE Noah Jones.
Thus a hole in MSU’s talent pool could form in 2016 and 2017 when these players are true seniors and fifth-year seniors.
Three of the 17 players in this program will earn fewer than two letters: Bodanis, Powell and Jones. Therefore, they will be classified as busts in the SPARTAN Magazine recruiting tier study. Three busts as part of a 17-man class is a bust rate of 17.6 percent. A bust rate higher than 33 percent is considered a failing class, according to the generally-accepted standards of recruiting coordinators from the 1990s - back when programs had recruiting coordinators and we began our tier study. SPARTAN Magazine continues to use .333 as the pass-fail mark in the area of attrition.
If Kilgore, Salmon and Williams fail to earn two letters, the bust rate for this class would climb to 35 percent. Consider that one of the members of this recruiting class is Michael Geiger, and the class would have an attrition rate of 37.5 percent among non-specialists (6 of 16).
Dantonio has had only one class with a bust rate of more than 33 percent, and that was the his second class, back in 2008, which was gutted by disciplinary issues (Glenn Winston, Eric Smith, Charles Burrell, Brynden Trawick, Caulton Ray, Jamihr Williams, Anthony Woods, Myles White). Several of those players were involved in the Rather Hall incident, as well as other off-field problems. That class had a bust rate of 43 percent (meaning 43 percent of the players in that recruiting class failed to earn two letters or more).
MSU survived those problems by sandwiching great classes around the troubled class of 2008. Dantonio’s first class in 2007 was an excellent one (33 percent All-Big Ten, the second highest rate in the 85-scholarship era at MSU). That group (led by Kirk Cousins, Greg Jones, BJ Cunningham, Chris L. Rucker and Joel Foreman) sent the program surging forward, with help from Dantonio’s masterful salvation of John L. Smith’s final two classes. This was followed up by a pair of classes in 2009 and 2010 that had easily the lowest attrition levels for MSU of the 85 scholarship era.
[SIDE NOTE: Smith recruited four classes for MSU. His first two were bad. His last two, in 2005 and 2006, were rescued by Dantonio. Smith’s ’05 class had a bust rate of just 19 percent, third-best at MSU since 1995. And 60 percent of Smith’s Class of 2006 became starters, the fourth-best percentage at MSU since 1995.
[Notables from Smith’s ’05 class include WR Kerry Reed, RB Javon Ringer, DE Jonal Saint-Dic, C Joel Nitchman, S Otis Wiley, plus serviceable starters such as LB Ryan Allison, FB Andrew Hawken, DE Brandon Long, OT Rocco Cironi, CB Ross Weaver, LB Adam Decker, S Dan Fortener, OG Brendon Moss and S Kendell Davis-Clark.]
[Star power from Smith’s ’06 class included DE Ervin Baldwin, WR Devin Thomas, TE Charlie Gantt, LB Eric Gordon, S Marcus Hyde, DT Ogemdi Nwagbuo and OT J’Michael Deane.]
Thus, there is no reason to panic about the trending problems for the Class of 2013, as long as the Classes of ’12, ’14 and ’15 stand strong. One shaky class won’t sink a team. But if MSU has two mediocre classes within a five-year span, then the Spartans could become in danger of experiencing a dip in the wins column.
INTERESTING MICRO-TRENDS
Several factors unique to 2013 prove interesting to study at this point, midway through the class’s college tenure. Among the trends we’re noticing from 2013 that had an impact on MSU recruiting:
* Talent in the state of Michigan was poor.
* Talent in Ohio was a bit substandard, and MSU did not do well in its key border state.
* Wide receiver talent in the Midwest was atrocious in 2013, yet MSU proved to survive better than most in the Big Ten by manufacture RJ Shelton as a receiver.
* MSU did poorly in Florida in 2013, part of a surprising multi-year trend of substandard recruiting for the Spartans in the Sunshine State.
Also, when considering the problems of 2013, it should be noted that MSU is a victim of its own success in some regards in this recruiting year. Because MSU recruited so well in 2009 and 2010 with such low levels of attrition, it left the Spartans with limited scholarship space for 2013. Because MSU had only three busts out of 21 players in 2010, and three busts out of 23 in 2009, the Spartans had room to sign only 17 players in 2013. Dantonio is happy with the low attrition levels in his program, but it causes a program to maintain those low attrition levels in smaller classes if it wants to avoid a dropoff in seniors down the road.
Due to the small Class of 2013 (only 17 players, with just 16 of them being non-kickers), it only takes three busts plus three mediocre players to render 37 percent of your class powerless. That’s what MSU is facing in the Class of 2013, lack of strength due in part to lack of numbers.
With Geiger, Delton Williams, Shelton and Hicks having played as true freshmen, and Powell, Jones and Bodanis gone, MSU may have only six fifth-year seniors of substance in 2017: OT Dennis Finley, DE Demetrious Cooper, LB Shane Jones, QB Damion Terry, LB Jon Reschke and TE Dylan Chmura. Cooper is the only one at this point that would be considered a favorite to earn a starting job by 2017. Reschke and Finley need to begin to rebound this month. Chmura needs to develop. Terry needs to rekindle past spark.
It’s still early, but - for now - MSU doesn’t seem to have much star power in the handful of players challenging to be part of the two-deep from this class. By contrast, Nick Saban’s second, third and fourth classes had high rates of attrition (36, 39 and 36 percent busts) but survived by having high star power in those same classes (22 percent NFL Draft picks in 1996, 21 percent in 1997 and 18 percent in 1998). Those mark three of MSU’s four best recruiting classes since 1995 in terms of NFL Draft picks, with players such as Sedrick Irvin, Robaire Smith, Aric Morris and Gari Scott (1996), Plaxico Burress, Renaldo Hill, Herb Haygood, TJ Turner, Chris Baker (1997), and Greg Robinson-Randall, Julian Peterson, Josh Shaw, [plus un-drafted eventual pros Little John Flowers and Josh Thornhill] (1998) shining big batches of star power on the depth chart despite problematic attrition levels.
The thin, attrition-plagued Class of 2013, however, doesn’t look like it will be supported by the levels of pro talent that Saban had in those at-risk classes of ’95, ’96 and ’97. Instead, this class appears to be remarkably low on star power.
Shelton has been the best player in this class so far. Darian Hicks didn’t stick as a starter last year and will try to bounce back in 2015. Terry is a candidate for the QB job in the future, but remains a variable. Reschke had the look for a standout early in his career but has been slowed by injuries and missed practice time. Shane Jones was one of three four-star recruits in this class but doesn’t have the speed to live up to that ranking. Barring injuries to those in front of him, Jones is on track to be a second-string reserve for the last three years of his career.
This class needs Terry, Reschke, Finley, RB Gerald Holmes and Cooper to sack up and become All-Big Ten performers over the next three seasons in order for this class to attempt to keep pace with the super-strong recruiting classes that preceded them. Many players in the Dantonio era have made big, unexpected jumps in the last year or two of their college careers (think Tony Lippett, Jeremy Langford, Marcus Hyde, Dion Sims, Devin Thomas, Ervin Baldwin, Jonal Saint-Dic). MSU will need similar risers in the Class of 2013, but there isn’t a deep pool of candidates.
Rivals.com ranked Michigan State State’s 2013 recruiting class No. 5 in the Big Ten and No. 40 in the country.
This class was ranked No. 47 (No. 8, Big Ten) by Scout.com, No. 43 (No. 7) by 247, and No. 35 (No. 6) by ESPN.com.
In ranking the classes on a stars-per-recruit basis, Michigan State’s class ranked No. 26 in the country by Rivals.com with an average of 3.11 stars per recruit (No. 4 in the Big Ten).
Just two programs that signed fewer than 23 recruits cracked the Top 20 in the Rivals.com team rankings in 2013. Texas (No. 23) was the only program with 18 or fewer ranked ahead of Michigan State.
"I don't get too concerned about the size of the class as much as the quality of the class," said Dantonio on signing day. "If you (sign) 25 guys, you have lost a lot of players (to attrition). When you don't lose as many players, that's a good thing when spring ball comes around."
The signature of four-star prospects Terry, Reschke and Jones, and the signing of just one two-star prospect (Canadian transfer James Bodanis), contributed to the program’s healthy average star ranking. Terry, who had been unranked at the time of his spring commitment, was given a four-star designation by most analysts as a senior during an undefeated season at Erie (PA) Cathedral Prep.
Terry, Reschke, and Jones comprise three-fifths of the upper tier recruits in Dantonio’s seventh class. Finley, an offensive tackle from Detroit Cass Tech, and Terry’s high school teammate, Delton Williams, are also classified as upper tier recruits on the basis of their inclusion in the national Top 250 by at least one major recruiting analyst.
Williams is one of four players in this class that earned a letter as a true freshman. Hicks, Shelton, and placekicker Michael Geiger also lettered. Each saw the field in some capacity in each of Michigan State’s Big Ten games, including a 34-24 victory over previously unbeaten and No. 2 ranked Ohio State in the 2013 Big Ten Championship.
“We need to be concerned about the guys that we're taking, not the guys we're losing out on, and that's been the basic idea and premise here that we've started with and we've always tried to do that,” said Dantonio. “Even going back to our time at the University of Cincinnati, we just tried to lay one brick in front of the other one and just keep trying to build a foundation, and we built it with people.
“But our guys who have come here, going back as an example to that 2007 class, have been tremendously successful. They're not successful just because of themselves, they're successful because of the chemistry created here, the resources that they're given, the coaching they're given, and their abilities, as well. So guys have a tendency to gain ground once they get to college because they're going to be competing against a higher level player, and they're going to be receiving more resources, more instruction. Not necessarily better instruction but more of it.”
GAINING TRACTION AT O-TACKLE?
Signing Finley marked Michigan State’s lone head-to-head recruiting victory over Ohio State in this class. Finley also had Wisconsin on his short list at the time of his commitment in September of 2012, five months before 2013 signing day. In-state rival Michigan offered post-commitment.
Finley broke a 10-plus-year recruiting drought for Michigan State at Cass Tech. He was the first Technician to sign with Michigan State since the late 1990’s when the program inked defensive back Roderick Maples and fullback Dawan Moss. A total of 16 Cass Tech players signed with Big Ten programs between Dantonio’s hire and Finley’s landing at Michigan State.
Listed at 6-foot-6, 305, Finley possesses the physical traits to develop into a high-functioning offensive tackle, a position the program had difficulty filling with four-year players, partly due to injuries, during Dantonio’s first seven years at MSU. Michigan State managed, in part, by supplementing its roster with junior college prospects such as Fou Fonoti.
Playing athletic guards like Dan France and Donovan Clark out of position was another way the Spartans addressed injuries and attrition at offensive tackle. Bowling Green transfer D.J. Young also provided a lift by starting at right tackle in 2009 and left tackle in 2010 for the co-Big Ten championship team.
Finley wasn’t the first physically impressive four-year tackle Michigan State signed during Dantonio’s first eight years. As first- or second-year prospects, Henry Conway, Skyler Burkland, Zach Hueter and David Barrent all appeared to have upside as tackles. Primarily because of injuries, none of those players lived up to their potential at the position.
MSU had room for only one offensive tackle-sized recruit for 2013, and went with Finley.
Finley is expected to help MSU’s offensive tackle depth in 2015, but has yet to make a strong push for a regular role, with two members of the previous year’s recruiting class - Jack Conklin (left tackle) and Kodi Kieler (right tackle) - nailing down starting jobs.
With Conklin a possibility to move on to the NFL after this season, MSU badly needs Finley and/or freshman David Beedle to develop rapidly at offensive tackle in preparation for 2016, and also to provide depth insurance for 2015. Finley needs a big August from himself, and MSU needs it from him. And MSU can’t afford any foul-ups from Kieler or Beedle.
FAILING IN FLORIDA?
Michigan State signed three players from Florida in 2013 - DT Noah Jones, DT Devyn Salmon and CB Justin Williams. One is already out of the program (Jones) and the other two are not in the three-deep, and seem unlikely to ever make a dent in the playing group.
Lack of punch from Florida in this class fits a Michigan State recruiting trend that has been a curious shortcoming for Dantonio’s Spartan program since he took over.
Back in 2007, one would have assumed that if MSU was going to rise and become the only program in the nation to finish ranked in the Top 5 in 2013 and 2014 then the Spartans would surely have gotten help from the nation’s top producer of individual, play-making talent - Florida. But that’s not been the case.
Dantonio signed zero players from Florida in 2007 and ’08.
Since then, MSU has signed 12 players from Florida. None of them have earned All-Big Ten honors. None of them nailed down long-term, full-time starting job.
Only three of the 12 have started at any time (DE Denzel Drone, DB Jairus Jones, WR Macgarrett Kings).
Four have failed to earn a letter (WR Juwan Caesar from the Class of 2011, Ezra Robinson from the Class of 2010, Noah Jones from the Class of 2013, and DB Justin Wilson signed in 2010 and never enrolled after being “uninvited” by MSU coaches for reasons that remain unclear).
As for the other Floridians, Salmon is repping at No. 2 center but is actually the No. 4 man at that position on the depth chart (behind guards Brian Allen and Benny McGowan, who are the true in-case-of-emergency replacements in case anything happened to Jack Allen). And Justin Williams is in danger of sinking to fourth string at CB this month.
The top hopes from Florida of the Dantonio era are redshirt freshmen: RB Madre London and LB T.J. Harrell. Both are second-string and likely to be in the playing group this fall.
Junior college transfer Miguel Machado played high school ball in Miami but was recruited by MSU out of Pasadena (Calif.) Community College. He is second-string right tackle this month and likely to be in the playing group this fall.
If Machado, Harrell and London crack the playing group this fall, it would mark the biggest push of Florida talent of the Dantonio era - something that is long overdue, and unaided by this Class of 2013.
STARTING SOMETHING IN ILLINOIS
The signing of defensive end Demetrius Cooper in this class marked a rare (at the time) recruiting victory for Michigan State over Notre Dame in the Chicago area, and foreshadowed more activity for MSU in Chicagoland in 2014, ’15 and ’16. In 2014, MSU landed Chicagoland prospects Brian Allen, Chase Gianacakos, Matt Morrissey and Enoch Smith. MSU beat out Notre Dame, among others, for Smith.
MSU then scored a major recruiting victory in Chicago the following year with Chicago DePaul Rivals250 d-end Raequan Williams (over Iowa, Penn State and Tennessee). MSU followed up in the spring and summer of 2015 for the class of ’16 in the Land of Lincoln with victories over Notre Dame (and others) for Rivals100 DE Josh King of Hinsdale and three-star safety Kenney Lyke of Palatine, plus major recruiting victories in four-star DT Naquan Jones of Evanston, stock-on-the-rise three-star DT Mike Panasiuk of Roselle Lakepark and Hinsdale o-lineman Matt Allen.
Prior to the recent hot streak in Illinois - which began with Jack Allen and Cooper in this class - Michigan State woefully underperformed as a recruiter in Illinois for decades.
Splitting Illinois into two regions with defensive line coach Ron Burton working in Chicago and quarterbacks coach Brad Salem active in the suburbs has produced much better results in the state since Michigan State restructured its coaching staff when former Illinois recruiter Dan Roushar left to become an assistant for the New Orleans Saints in 2013. Roushar did a good job of establishing networks in Illinois, but wasn’t a high-pressure salesperson in the recruiting game. Burton and Salem quickly took advantage of some of Roushar’s groundwork and finished on key recruits in 2013.
SUBSTANDARD IN OHIO
Michigan State has gotten great production from three-star prospects from Ohio during the Dantonio era. And it all started back in 2007 with Greg Jones, BJ Cunningham, and Chris L. Rucker -- each from Ohio, each a middle tier recruit, and each drafted by NFL teams.
Solon (Ohio) High’s Darian Hicks and Warren Harding’s Jalyn Powell - a pair of three-star Ohioans - looked like future stars for the Big Ten’s best defense at this time last year. However, Hicks lost his starting job late in the 2014 season and isn’t a favorite to win that role this fall. Powell transferred from Michigan State to Youngstown State after spring practice in 2015 rather than attempt to compete as a second-string ‘star’ linebacker this fall.
The Spartans did not go toe-to-toe with heavyweight programs for the signature of either, but each player was a top recruiting priority. Michigan State offered both Hicks and Powell early in the recruiting process.
Ohio State signed 10 of the top 50-ranked players in Ohio, according to Rivals.com rankings. Back in 2013, it was still vertically impossible for MSU to beat the Buckeyes in Ohio for a recruit. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan signed nine Ohioans, most of which have done next to nothing in Ann Arbor thus far (DB Dymonte Thomas, LB Mike McCray, TE Jake Butt, DE Taco Charlton, DB Ross Douglass, LB Ben Gedeon, RB Deveon Smith, WR Jaron Dukes and DB Reon Dawson). Charlton and Butt remain solid prospects, but the rest are on par with MSU’s Jalyn Powell and Trey Kilgore as unproductive (thus far) exports from The Buckeye State in 2013.
As for in-state talent, it’s still too early to come to final conclusions on the high school talent that came out of the state of Michigan in 2013, but it’s safe to say the early returns on that group has been underwhelming.
Eight-teen players from Michigan signed with major conference teams in 2013. MSU signed three of them: No. 4-ranked Reschke, No. 9. Finley, No. 11 Holmes. MSU offered scholarships to only four others: No. 1 Steve Elmer, OL, Midland (Notre Dame), No. 2 Shane Morris, QB, Warren De La Salle (Michigan), No. 5 David Dawson, OL, Detroit Cass Tech (Michigan), No. 6, Wyatt Shallman, Ath., Detroit Catholic Central (Michigan).
Elmer is starting at Notre Dame. The rest of those guys haven’t done a thing.
Few Wolverine in-state players from 2013 have made a dent (Morris; No. 3 CB Jourdan Lewis, Detroit Cass Tech; Dawson; Shallman; No. 7 DB Delano Hill, Detroit Cass Tech; No. 10 WR Csont’e York; No. 17 WR Da’Mario Jones, Westland John Glenn; No. 21 TE Khalid Hill, Detroit Crockett).
Hill has been pedestrian at the safety position. Lewis started seven games at corner last year and seems to have a promising future. MSU offered neither player.
Meanwhile, two in-state players who were not offered by MSU or Michigan are heading into fall camp as first-stringers at Florida and NC State.
Cameron Dillard, an offensive lineman from Canton, Mich., was ranked No. 12 in the state by Rivals.com. He is No. 1 for the Gators at center, this month.
And Joshua Jones, a DB from Walled Lake Western, ranked No. 8 in the state by Rivals.com, is a first-string safety at NC State.
If MSU had more scholarship room, perhaps the Spartans would have offered Dillard and Jones and gotten them both. However, MSU has scholarship room to add Canadian project James Bodanis at the 11th hour, thus MSU theoretically had room for Dillard or Jones.
Dillard is short, at 6-foot-3. MSU already has enough short o-linemen in the Allen brothers. MSU has been trying to make a movement toward tall offensive guards and offensive tackles on its roster, with the exception of the Allen brothers. Thus, MSU - with limited scholarship room - didn’t offer Dillard.
Finley was the only offensive lineman MSU offered in 2013. Bodanis was originally signed as a defensive lineman.
MSU already had a commitment from Jalyn Powell when Jones camped in East Lansing. Jones was solid, with a tall, strong frame, but not quite impressive enough, apparently, to get the scholarship offer.
WINS AND LOSSES
As Max Bullough and Kyler Elsworth were preparing for their final season, the Spartans addressed the future at Mike linebacker with the addition of a pair of upper tier prospects in Birmingham Brother Rice’s Jon Reschke and Cincinnati Archbishop Moeller’s Shane Jones. Reschke was the higher-ranked of the two players, and he created more buzz during his first 12 months on campus, but the signature of Jones represents a bigger recruiting victory for Michigan State given that Reschke has family ties to the program through his father Paul, a walk-on during the 1970’s. Michigan State beat out Michigan, Nebraska, Penn State, and Louisville for Jones, who had close to 20 offers from power conference programs representing the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Big East, Big 12, and Pac 12.
A shoulder injury caused Reschke to miss most of last year. Surgery caused him to miss most of winter conditioning and virtually all of the spring. His development needs to pick back up this August.
Jones carried a bit too much baby fat and not enough quickness during his first two years on campus. He made progress in the spring and repped as a No. 2 MLB while Reschke was out, but he needs to find another step of quickness in order to be able to play the position effectively for a top-ranked defense.
Fort Wayne, Ind., five-star linebacker Jaylon Smith (Notre Dame) and five-star Georgia defensive tackle Montravius Adams (Auburn) gave Michigan State enough consideration to check out the campus as unofficial visitors, but neither of those elite national recruits qualify as big recruiting losses because the Spartans never had a realistic shot of landing either. Both literally and figuratively, Texas offensive lineman Caleb Benenoch (6-5, 310) was Michigan State’s biggest recruiting loss during this cycle. He decommitted from MSU and signed with UCLA.
Unlike Big Ten rivals Iowa, Northwestern, and Nebraska, Michigan State has not had much of an active recruiting presence in Texas in past decades. So it came as some surprise when Benenoch committed to Michigan State in March of 2012 as a junior.
Almost immediately after his commitment, Benenoch had friends and family advising him to reconsider. When he re-opened the recruiting process in May, he effectively cut ties with Spartan program. Thus, the Texan had committed to MSU and then eliminated MSU, all before the summer camp season. That was new ground, all the way around.
Bennenoch was a solid three-star prospect at the time of his commitment to Michigan State. He was given a fourth star by both Rivals.com and Scout.com. His jump up the rankings was validated by on-field success at UCLA as a rare true freshman starter at offensive tackle in the fall of 2013. He also started all 13 games for UCLA last year, earning Honorable Mention All-Pac 12 honors.
Michigan State’s lack of depth at the offensive tackle position made losing Benenoch more painful than it might have been if he had played a skill position.
Michigan State got a couple of intriguing prospects out of Wisconsin in RJ Shelton and Dylan Chmura, and for a while the Spartans were sitting in good position to sign Dairy State defensive ends Alec James and AJ Natter, who were ranked No. 2 and 3 in Wisconsin by Rivals.com. Michigan State, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri finished runner-up for Natter, who committed to Nebraska as a junior in April. James committed to Wisconsin over finalists Notre Dame, Michigan State, Oregon and TCU in August.
Michigan State’s three-year run of signing the No. 1 ranked player in Michigan came to an end when Midland’s Steve Elmer (6-6, 305) selected Notre Dame over Michigan State, Michigan, and a host of other major conference scholarship offers. A US Army All-American and consensus Top 100 recruit as a senior at Midland, Elmer validated his rank by starting four games as a true freshman in 2013 and then starting all 13 games in 2014.
INTERESTING WR STUDY
It was a terrible year for wide receiver recruiting in the Midwest in 2013. The lack of upper tier or middle tier recruits in the Midwest in 2013 offers an interesting case study today of which programs in the Big Ten were able to make good evaluations amid a slim pool of talent.
The results: Penn State, Michigan State and Ohio State have so far easily out-produced the rest of the Big Ten with meager WR pickings in the region, with Iowa a distant fourth and the rest of the pack shooting blanks. (More on this later).
Penn State went outside the region to sign a three-star WR who turned out to be a stud (Virginian DaeSean Hamilton). He led the Big Ten in receptions last year with 82.
Ohio State signed a junior college transfer (Corey Smith), who had 20 catches last year and figures to be a second-string contributor this year. Smith is originally from Akron, and went to OSU via Grand Rapids Community College and East Mississippi Community College.
Shelton ranked sixth for the Spartans in receptions last year, but he has EASILY been the most productive, four-year Midwestern WR recruit in the Big Ten from the 2013 recruiting class. That’s how thin the Midwestern talent pool for WRs was in 2013.
MSU signed three sleeper WR prospects in 2013: Jay Harris, Trey Kilgore and former running back prospect R.J. Shelton.
MSU’s class gained help at the WR position with walk-on Tres Barksdale (Solon, Ohio), who is working as a third-stringer on the 2015 depth chart and has been ahead of Kilgore throughout their careers.
Give credit to Michigan State in manufacturing a WR out of Shelton, and a functional walk-on, when there was so little to choose from in the region.
As for Harris, MSU parted ways with the Pennsylvanian a few months after he signed in 2013 due to unsavory conduct as a rap musician.
Kilgore has been unable to break into the playing group and isn’t regarded as a major threat to do so this year.
THE THREE WRS THAT GOT AWAY
Aside from the three sleeper wide receivers that Michigan State signed in 2013, the Spartans offered scholarships to only three other wide receivers from the Midwest that year: Laquon Treadwell (Crete, Ill./Ole Miss), Kevin Gladney (Akron, Ohio/Nebraska) and Tyler Boyd (Pittsburgh, Pa./Pitt).
MSU didn’t come close to getting any of the three.
Treadwell ran a strange recruitment and signed with one of the more suspicious programs in the country.
Boyd - the nation’s No. 103 recruit - visited Pitt, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Gladney made an early-summer commitment to Nebraska, with Iowa placing second.
Treadwell was SEC Freshman of the Year in 2013, and is an All-America candidate this fall after missing all but nine games last year with a broken leg.
Boyd was first-team all-ACC last year with 78 catches. He was suspended for a little more than a month by new Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi this summer after a June arrest for driving under the influence. Boyd was reinstated in late July. Narduzzi said it remains to be seen whether Boyd will be suspended from playing in games this season.
Gladney has yet to register a reception at Nebraska.
On signing day in 2013, there seemed to be a shortage of quality WRs coming from the Midwest. Two-and-a-half years later, it still looks that way, with no sleepers emerging to belie the recruiting analysts. There are still two or three seasons left to be played for this talent pool, but the group as a whole has gotten off to a very slow start.
Of the Midwestern wide receivers who signed with Big Ten schools in 2013, only three have more than four career catches. And two of them (Ohio State’s Smith and Iowa’s Damond Powell) were junior college transfers.
That leaves only one four-year Midwesterner with more than four career catches thus far - RJ Shelton. He has 20 receptions, 301 yards rushing and 992 yards in kickoff returns. Shelton has seven career TDs - four rushing, two receiving and one kick return.
Powell is an interesting case. The former juco transfer had 18 catches last year for Iowa and signed a free agent contract to try out with the Arizona Cardinals in the spring. He made news on July 24 when he was shot outside his home in South Toledo, Ohio. The injuries to his face sustained via the drive-by shooting were not life-threating.
BEST WRS IN THE MIDWEST
The terrible productivity of Midwestern receivers from the class of 2013 makes it compelling to go back and check the regional rankings from that year and see what happened to them.
Only seven Midwestern WRs ranked among the Top 75 WRs in the country, according to Rivals.com.
A rundown of the top-ranked Midwestern WR recruits of 2013:
1. Laquon Treadwell (6-3, 198, Crete, Ill., ranked the No. 1 WR in the country) signed with Ole Miss.
2. Tyler Boyd (6-1, 170, Pittsburgh, ranked the No. 12 WR in the country) signed with Pittsburgh.
3. Shelton Gibson (6-1, 175, No. 15 in the nation, Cleveland Heights), signed with West Virginia. MSU did not offer. He also visited Ohio State, Kentucky and Tennessee. He had three catches for the Mountaineers in 2014.
(Treadwell, Boyd and Gibson were the only WRs in the Midwest with four- or five-star Rivals.com status).
4. Rob Wheelwright (6-3, 185, No. 49 WR in the nation, Columbus Walnut Ridge), signed with Wisconsin over Michigan, Nebraska and others. MSU did not offer. Wheelwright had one catch for Wisconsin in 2014.
5. Kevin Gladney (6-1, 182, No. 59 WR in the nation, Akron Firestone) signed with Nebraska over Iowa. He has yet to make a catch for the Huskers.
6. Jaron Dukes (6-4, 200, No. 60 WR in the nation, Columbus Marion Franklin), signed with Michigan. MSU did not offer. Dukes has yet to make a catch for the Wolverines.
7. Csont’e York (6-3, 185, No. 75 WR in the nation, Harper Woods Chandler Park Academy), signed with Michigan. MSU didn’t offer. York is no longer with the team, after being charged with assault for sucker punching a man outside an Ann Arbor bar in 2014, and incident that was caught on video surveillance and went viral.
(Rivals.com ranked Shelton as the No. 31 running back in the nation, and the No. 4 player in Wisconsin).
WHAT ABOUT IN-STATE?
With the Midwest so weak at WR in 2013, what did the state of Michigan look like at that position? Below is Rivals.com’s four WRs who ranked among the state’s overall Top 30 (MSU didn’t offer any of them a scholarship):
1. Csont’e York, Michigan.
2. Da’Mario Jones (6-2, 185, Westland John Glenn), signed with Michigan. He one career reception.
3. Gairus Coleman (5-9, 180, Farmington Hills Harrison), did not sign with a Division I school.
4. Jamari Eiland (5-11, 175, Plymouth-Canton) signed with the University of Buffalo.
As for in-state MAC schools, only Central Michigan signed an in-state WR recruit: Corey Willis (of Holland, Mich., High School). He had seven catches in 2014 for Central Michigan.
Bowling Green’s Teo Redding (Warren Michigan Collegiate High School) had five catches last year.
There wasn’t much available in Ohio, either. Only seven WRs made Rivals.com’s Ohio Top 75 in 2013 (MSU offered only two of them):
1. Shelton Gibson, Cleveland Heights, signed with West Virginia. MSU did not offer.
2. Rob Wheelwright, Columbus Walnut Ridge, signed with Wisconsin. MSU did not offer.
3. Kevin Gladney, Akron Firestone, signed with Nebraska. MSU offered.
4. Jaron Dukes, Columbus Marion Franklin, signed with Michigan. MSU did not offer.
5. Trey Kilgore, 6-2, 183, Cincinnati St. Xavier. He signed with Michigan State over Iowa, Kentucky and MAC schools.
6. Zachary Yousey, 6-2, 190, Columbus Harvest Prep, signed with Toledo.
7. Dan Monteroso, 6-3, 180, St. Clairsville High, signed with Purdue. He has one career catch with the Boilermakers.
What about the states of Indiana and Illinois? MSU looked there, too, and didn’t find much.
Rivals.com ranked only one WR in the Top 20 in Indiana -Isaac Griffith (6-0, 180, Fort Wayne Homestead). Griffith has yet to make a collegiate reception. He nearly drowned in Florida in 2014 due to a frightening riptide incident, when he was rescued by teammates. This spring, he was arrest for driving under the influence.
In Illinois, Derrick Willies (6-3, 190, Rock Island, Ill.) was the only WR aside from Treadwell to be ranked among the Top 30 players in the state. He signed with Iowa over offers from Iowa State and directional Illinois schools. He had four catches for the Hawkeyes last year.
In addition to Wheelwright, Wisconsin signed three-star WR recruit Jazz Peavy (6-1, 175) of Kenosha, Wis. He also had offers from Minnesota and Wyoming. He has yet to catch a pass as a collegian.
WRS FROM OUTSIDE THE MIDWEST
If the Midwest was so thin on WR talent, where did Big Ten schools go to find WR recruits in 2013?
Penn State found a gem in Hamilton, of Stafford (Va.) Mountain View. The three-star recruit was ranked No. 15 in Virginia and the No. 42 WR in the country. He also visited Wake Forest and had offers from Illinois, Boston College, Michigan State, Virginia and Virginia Tech.
MSU was stingy with WR scholarship offers in 2013. The fact that the Spartans offered a guy who ended up bing a live sleeper for the Nittany Lions lends credence to MSU’s reputation as a keen evaluator of talent.
Hamilton was productive at Penn State, but that doesn’t mean he would have caught 80-plus passes for other programs. Penn State was low on talent when Hamilton arrived, making it easier for him to make an early splash. But there’s little doubt that every other program in the Big Ten would take him now, if they could.
Other notable out-of-region WR signings in the Big Ten in 2013:
* Iowa signed unranked Matt Vandeburgh (6-1, 185) out of Brandon, S.D. He had no other Division 1 offers. But he played as a true freshman and has 22 career catches.
The combination of South Dakotan Vandeburgh and juco transfer Powell made Iowa one of the more successfully resourceful schools in the Big Ten in 2013 for WR recruiting - although neither has been a game-breaker.
* In addition to Corey Smith, Ohio State also signed James Clark, a four-star recruit from New Smyrna Beach, Fla. He has yet to make a collegiate catch.
* Purdue went to Atlanta, Ga. to sign three-star DeAngelo Yancey (6-2, 200) over Ole Miss, NC State and Wake Forest. He had 12 catches last year.
* Minnesota went to Santa Clarita, Calif. to sign Drew Wolitarsky (6-3, 215). The three-star recruit was ranked No. 90 in California and picked the Gophers one week prior to signing day after also visiting San Jose State. He also had offers from Hawaii and San Diego State.
Wolitarsky had 10 catches in 2014 for the Gophers.
* Illinois signed Washington D.C. native Martize Barr out of Iowa Western Community College in 2013. Barr had 19 catches in 2014.
The Illini also went to Mansfield, Texas to sign unranked, two-star WR recruit Marchie Murdock in 2013. He also had offers Colorado State and San Diego State. He had one catch in 2014 for the Illini.
* Northwestern went to Houston, Texas to sign three-star WR Macan Wilson (6-1, 180). He also had offers from California and Tulsa. He has yet to make a collegiate catch.
Michigan, Northwesten, Nebraska and Indiana have yet to get a reception from the WRs they signed in 2013 - from the Midwest or otherwise.
LESSONS LEARNED FOR MSU
Although MSU’s Class of 2013 as a whole is a weak one, the Spartans managed to avoid a hole at the WR position in this class despite the severe shortage of WR talent close to home. The Spartans did it by manufacturing RB prospect Shelton into a multi-threat WR.
MSU did not sign a WR in 2014.
That created a two-year recruiting span in which Shelton was the only functional WR Michigan State signed.
MSU learned from the lessons of 2013 two years later when only one Midwestern WR was rated with Rivals.com four-star status. MSU recruited that WR hard, but Miles Boykin (6-3, 225, New Lenox, Ill.) picked Notre Dame over the Spartans.
The resourceful Spartans responded by branching out of the Midwest to sign a pair of extremely promising WR prospects in Felton Davis (6-4, 17, Highland Springs, Va.) and Darrell Stewart (6-2, 195, Houston). Stewart is already impressing observers during summer workouts as part of the incoming true freshman class.
CAMP SNAPSHOT: D-LINE
MSU has made huge noise with d-line recruiting for the 2014, ’15 and ’16 classes. However, the Spartans were 1-for-4 in defensive line recruiting in 2013, the final season Ted Gill was on staff as d-line coach before he was fired and Ron Burton came aboard.
Of the four d-linemen that MSU signed in 2013, only Demetrius Cooper is still with the program. He is expected to be in the rotation at defensive end this fall, and could possibly start.
As for the other three, Floridian Noah Jones battled accountability issues and had to transfer to a junior college after failing to keep pace, academically. Devyn Salmon moved to the offensive line where he is repping as the No. 2 center. University of Toronto transfer James Bodanis, a late, desperate addition to this recruiting class, was hoping for a third-year of eligibility for 2015, but didn’t receive it. Even if he had gotten a third year of eligibility, it’s doubtful he would have earned a spot in the playing group on either side of the ball after moving to o-line last season.
Jones and Bodanis were lower tier recruits.
MSU took a long look at a solid cast of d-line campers earlier in 2013 before settling on Jones and Bodanis. Among the campers:
Patrick Dougherty (Indiana), James Connor (Pittsburgh), Luke MacClean (Pittsburgh), Dawaune Smoot (Illinois), and Nate Jeppesen (Toledo). They each signed letters of intent with Division 1 programs after failing to earn offers at Michigan State’s June camp.
Connor was one of the highest ranked players at Michigan State’s June camp, as the No. 26 weak-side defensive end and No. 13 player in Pennsylvania according to Rivals.com.
Connor may have worked out as a defensive lineman at Michigan State’s June camp, and was classified as a d-end by most analysts, but he wanted a shot at running back. He made good on that shot at Pitt, rushing for 799 yards as a true freshman and then 1,765 last year as a sophomore. The bruising runner is one of the top tailbacks in the country.
The following is the topper portion of our Class of 2013 analysis as part of our annual Four-Year Recruiting Review in the print version of SPARTAN Magazine.
In this week's issue of the magazine, we analyze MSU's 2013 and 2014 recruiting classes. In the next edition of the magazine, we will analyze the 2012 and 2011 classes. We've been doing this every year since the mid-90s.
I've been putting this together over the last few days. Wanted to have it done prior to the Chicago trip, but I got too involved in some of the retrospective analysis.
Following this intro, we go over every player in the class on an individual basis, how they played in the spring, and what they're facing heading into camp. That part of the Review is not included here. Wouldn't have the space to paste it all.
Here's the topper/intro:
(I haven't sent it to our proof reader yet. So some of it might be a little sloppy):
FOUR-YEAR RECRUITING REVIEW: CLASS OF 2013
2013 RIVALS.COM RECRUITING RANKINGS
1. Ohio State (2)
2. Michigan (5)
3. Nebraska (17)
4. Indiana (38)
5. Michigan State (40)
6. Penn State (43)
7. Illinois (47)
T-8. Northwestern (53)
T-8. Iowa (53)
10. Purdue (56)
11. Wisconsin (57)
12. Minnesota (61)
(National ranking in parentheses).
CLASS OF 2013 TIER BREAKDOWN
UPPER TIER
Jon Reschke
Damion Terry
Dennis Finley
Delton Williams
MIDDLE TIER
Dylan Chmura
Demetrious Cooper
Darian Hicks
Gerald Holmes
Trey Kilgore
Jalyn Powell
Devyn Salmon
RJ Shelton
Justin Williams
Noah Jones
LOWER TIER
None
KICKERS & CANADIANS
Michael Geiger
James Bodanis
main headline:
SLOW TO IMPRESS
Attrition Beginning to Hit Thin Class
CLASS OF 2013 AT A GLANCE
Has nailed down starting job (1): PK Michael Geiger.
Has started in the past (2): CB Darian Hicks, WR RJ Shelton.
Projected starter for 2015 (1): Geiger.
Possible starter for 2015 (4): DE Demetrius Cooper, RB Gerald Holmes, Shelton, RB Delton Williams
Projected in the two-deep for 2015 (9): Cooper, LT Dennis Finley, Hicks, Holmes, LB Jon Reschke, C Devyn Salmon, QB Damion Terry, Shelton, Williams.
Projected reserves 2015 (4): Dylan Chmura, Shane Jones, Trey Kilgore, Justin Williams.
Will fail to earn two letters/no longer in the program (4): James Bodanis, Noah Jones, Jalyn Powell.
This is the first of our annual two-part series, profiling Michigan State’s last four recruiting classes and judging the attrition rate, success of Spartan recruiting as well as the ranking accuracy of national recruiting analysts. Judging the success of a recruiting class and accuracy of national analysts usually becomes more clear three and four years after the class has signed. But these early reviews of the ’13 and ’14 classes provide an indication of where those groups are headed and the impact they could have on Michigan State in the near future. We will profile the 2011 and 2012 classes in the next issue of SPARTAN Magazine.
BY JIM COMPARONI AND PAUL KONYNDYK
We have an attrition alert within the program.
After several strong, efficient years of evaluation, development and recruiting for Mark Dantonio’s Michigan State Spartans, the Class of 2013 is at risk to becoming his second recruiting class to have a bust rate of greater than 33 percent and possibly the highest non-starter rate of any Dantonio class.
Secondly, there is a stark lack of star power in this class. Only three players were listed as starters or co-starters in the official preseason depth chart MSU released at Big Ten Media Days - wide receiver RJ Shelton, tailback Gerald Holmes and cornerback Darian Hicks. It’s conceivable that none of those three players will start this season.
Only three others from the Class of 2013 are listed in the two deep - defensive end Demetrious Cooper, Mike linebacker Shane Jones and offensive tackle Dennis Finley. Cooper is the only player of those three regarded as being a strong candidate for consistent playing time in 2015. Finley and Jones are suspect.
By comparison, the class that is one year younger than these guys, the Class of 2014, has three players in the starting lineup: safety Montae Nicholson, offensive guard Brian Allen and defensive tackle Malik McDowell.
It’s difficult to get a completely accurate read on which players will become starters two-and-a-half years into a college career, but the Class of 2013 is low on first-stringers and strangely low on second-stringers at this stage.
Nine of the 17 players in this class are listed as third stringers or lower, or are out of the program altogether. Of those, quarterback Damion Terry and linebacker Jon Reschke are solid candidates to rise to a level of prominence at some point, and it’s too early to get a read on tight end Dylan Chmura, but the others - WR Trey Kilgore, C Devyn Salmon, CB Justin Williams - haven’t provided any indication of being able to climb the depth chart. Three others are no longer with the program: DL/OL James Bodanis, LB Jalyn Powell and DE Noah Jones.
Thus a hole in MSU’s talent pool could form in 2016 and 2017 when these players are true seniors and fifth-year seniors.
Three of the 17 players in this program will earn fewer than two letters: Bodanis, Powell and Jones. Therefore, they will be classified as busts in the SPARTAN Magazine recruiting tier study. Three busts as part of a 17-man class is a bust rate of 17.6 percent. A bust rate higher than 33 percent is considered a failing class, according to the generally-accepted standards of recruiting coordinators from the 1990s - back when programs had recruiting coordinators and we began our tier study. SPARTAN Magazine continues to use .333 as the pass-fail mark in the area of attrition.
If Kilgore, Salmon and Williams fail to earn two letters, the bust rate for this class would climb to 35 percent. Consider that one of the members of this recruiting class is Michael Geiger, and the class would have an attrition rate of 37.5 percent among non-specialists (6 of 16).
Dantonio has had only one class with a bust rate of more than 33 percent, and that was the his second class, back in 2008, which was gutted by disciplinary issues (Glenn Winston, Eric Smith, Charles Burrell, Brynden Trawick, Caulton Ray, Jamihr Williams, Anthony Woods, Myles White). Several of those players were involved in the Rather Hall incident, as well as other off-field problems. That class had a bust rate of 43 percent (meaning 43 percent of the players in that recruiting class failed to earn two letters or more).
MSU survived those problems by sandwiching great classes around the troubled class of 2008. Dantonio’s first class in 2007 was an excellent one (33 percent All-Big Ten, the second highest rate in the 85-scholarship era at MSU). That group (led by Kirk Cousins, Greg Jones, BJ Cunningham, Chris L. Rucker and Joel Foreman) sent the program surging forward, with help from Dantonio’s masterful salvation of John L. Smith’s final two classes. This was followed up by a pair of classes in 2009 and 2010 that had easily the lowest attrition levels for MSU of the 85 scholarship era.
[SIDE NOTE: Smith recruited four classes for MSU. His first two were bad. His last two, in 2005 and 2006, were rescued by Dantonio. Smith’s ’05 class had a bust rate of just 19 percent, third-best at MSU since 1995. And 60 percent of Smith’s Class of 2006 became starters, the fourth-best percentage at MSU since 1995.
[Notables from Smith’s ’05 class include WR Kerry Reed, RB Javon Ringer, DE Jonal Saint-Dic, C Joel Nitchman, S Otis Wiley, plus serviceable starters such as LB Ryan Allison, FB Andrew Hawken, DE Brandon Long, OT Rocco Cironi, CB Ross Weaver, LB Adam Decker, S Dan Fortener, OG Brendon Moss and S Kendell Davis-Clark.]
[Star power from Smith’s ’06 class included DE Ervin Baldwin, WR Devin Thomas, TE Charlie Gantt, LB Eric Gordon, S Marcus Hyde, DT Ogemdi Nwagbuo and OT J’Michael Deane.]
Thus, there is no reason to panic about the trending problems for the Class of 2013, as long as the Classes of ’12, ’14 and ’15 stand strong. One shaky class won’t sink a team. But if MSU has two mediocre classes within a five-year span, then the Spartans could become in danger of experiencing a dip in the wins column.
INTERESTING MICRO-TRENDS
Several factors unique to 2013 prove interesting to study at this point, midway through the class’s college tenure. Among the trends we’re noticing from 2013 that had an impact on MSU recruiting:
* Talent in the state of Michigan was poor.
* Talent in Ohio was a bit substandard, and MSU did not do well in its key border state.
* Wide receiver talent in the Midwest was atrocious in 2013, yet MSU proved to survive better than most in the Big Ten by manufacture RJ Shelton as a receiver.
* MSU did poorly in Florida in 2013, part of a surprising multi-year trend of substandard recruiting for the Spartans in the Sunshine State.
Also, when considering the problems of 2013, it should be noted that MSU is a victim of its own success in some regards in this recruiting year. Because MSU recruited so well in 2009 and 2010 with such low levels of attrition, it left the Spartans with limited scholarship space for 2013. Because MSU had only three busts out of 21 players in 2010, and three busts out of 23 in 2009, the Spartans had room to sign only 17 players in 2013. Dantonio is happy with the low attrition levels in his program, but it causes a program to maintain those low attrition levels in smaller classes if it wants to avoid a dropoff in seniors down the road.
Due to the small Class of 2013 (only 17 players, with just 16 of them being non-kickers), it only takes three busts plus three mediocre players to render 37 percent of your class powerless. That’s what MSU is facing in the Class of 2013, lack of strength due in part to lack of numbers.
With Geiger, Delton Williams, Shelton and Hicks having played as true freshmen, and Powell, Jones and Bodanis gone, MSU may have only six fifth-year seniors of substance in 2017: OT Dennis Finley, DE Demetrious Cooper, LB Shane Jones, QB Damion Terry, LB Jon Reschke and TE Dylan Chmura. Cooper is the only one at this point that would be considered a favorite to earn a starting job by 2017. Reschke and Finley need to begin to rebound this month. Chmura needs to develop. Terry needs to rekindle past spark.
It’s still early, but - for now - MSU doesn’t seem to have much star power in the handful of players challenging to be part of the two-deep from this class. By contrast, Nick Saban’s second, third and fourth classes had high rates of attrition (36, 39 and 36 percent busts) but survived by having high star power in those same classes (22 percent NFL Draft picks in 1996, 21 percent in 1997 and 18 percent in 1998). Those mark three of MSU’s four best recruiting classes since 1995 in terms of NFL Draft picks, with players such as Sedrick Irvin, Robaire Smith, Aric Morris and Gari Scott (1996), Plaxico Burress, Renaldo Hill, Herb Haygood, TJ Turner, Chris Baker (1997), and Greg Robinson-Randall, Julian Peterson, Josh Shaw, [plus un-drafted eventual pros Little John Flowers and Josh Thornhill] (1998) shining big batches of star power on the depth chart despite problematic attrition levels.
The thin, attrition-plagued Class of 2013, however, doesn’t look like it will be supported by the levels of pro talent that Saban had in those at-risk classes of ’95, ’96 and ’97. Instead, this class appears to be remarkably low on star power.
Shelton has been the best player in this class so far. Darian Hicks didn’t stick as a starter last year and will try to bounce back in 2015. Terry is a candidate for the QB job in the future, but remains a variable. Reschke had the look for a standout early in his career but has been slowed by injuries and missed practice time. Shane Jones was one of three four-star recruits in this class but doesn’t have the speed to live up to that ranking. Barring injuries to those in front of him, Jones is on track to be a second-string reserve for the last three years of his career.
This class needs Terry, Reschke, Finley, RB Gerald Holmes and Cooper to sack up and become All-Big Ten performers over the next three seasons in order for this class to attempt to keep pace with the super-strong recruiting classes that preceded them. Many players in the Dantonio era have made big, unexpected jumps in the last year or two of their college careers (think Tony Lippett, Jeremy Langford, Marcus Hyde, Dion Sims, Devin Thomas, Ervin Baldwin, Jonal Saint-Dic). MSU will need similar risers in the Class of 2013, but there isn’t a deep pool of candidates.
Rivals.com ranked Michigan State State’s 2013 recruiting class No. 5 in the Big Ten and No. 40 in the country.
This class was ranked No. 47 (No. 8, Big Ten) by Scout.com, No. 43 (No. 7) by 247, and No. 35 (No. 6) by ESPN.com.
In ranking the classes on a stars-per-recruit basis, Michigan State’s class ranked No. 26 in the country by Rivals.com with an average of 3.11 stars per recruit (No. 4 in the Big Ten).
Just two programs that signed fewer than 23 recruits cracked the Top 20 in the Rivals.com team rankings in 2013. Texas (No. 23) was the only program with 18 or fewer ranked ahead of Michigan State.
"I don't get too concerned about the size of the class as much as the quality of the class," said Dantonio on signing day. "If you (sign) 25 guys, you have lost a lot of players (to attrition). When you don't lose as many players, that's a good thing when spring ball comes around."
The signature of four-star prospects Terry, Reschke and Jones, and the signing of just one two-star prospect (Canadian transfer James Bodanis), contributed to the program’s healthy average star ranking. Terry, who had been unranked at the time of his spring commitment, was given a four-star designation by most analysts as a senior during an undefeated season at Erie (PA) Cathedral Prep.
Terry, Reschke, and Jones comprise three-fifths of the upper tier recruits in Dantonio’s seventh class. Finley, an offensive tackle from Detroit Cass Tech, and Terry’s high school teammate, Delton Williams, are also classified as upper tier recruits on the basis of their inclusion in the national Top 250 by at least one major recruiting analyst.
Williams is one of four players in this class that earned a letter as a true freshman. Hicks, Shelton, and placekicker Michael Geiger also lettered. Each saw the field in some capacity in each of Michigan State’s Big Ten games, including a 34-24 victory over previously unbeaten and No. 2 ranked Ohio State in the 2013 Big Ten Championship.
“We need to be concerned about the guys that we're taking, not the guys we're losing out on, and that's been the basic idea and premise here that we've started with and we've always tried to do that,” said Dantonio. “Even going back to our time at the University of Cincinnati, we just tried to lay one brick in front of the other one and just keep trying to build a foundation, and we built it with people.
“But our guys who have come here, going back as an example to that 2007 class, have been tremendously successful. They're not successful just because of themselves, they're successful because of the chemistry created here, the resources that they're given, the coaching they're given, and their abilities, as well. So guys have a tendency to gain ground once they get to college because they're going to be competing against a higher level player, and they're going to be receiving more resources, more instruction. Not necessarily better instruction but more of it.”
GAINING TRACTION AT O-TACKLE?
Signing Finley marked Michigan State’s lone head-to-head recruiting victory over Ohio State in this class. Finley also had Wisconsin on his short list at the time of his commitment in September of 2012, five months before 2013 signing day. In-state rival Michigan offered post-commitment.
Finley broke a 10-plus-year recruiting drought for Michigan State at Cass Tech. He was the first Technician to sign with Michigan State since the late 1990’s when the program inked defensive back Roderick Maples and fullback Dawan Moss. A total of 16 Cass Tech players signed with Big Ten programs between Dantonio’s hire and Finley’s landing at Michigan State.
Listed at 6-foot-6, 305, Finley possesses the physical traits to develop into a high-functioning offensive tackle, a position the program had difficulty filling with four-year players, partly due to injuries, during Dantonio’s first seven years at MSU. Michigan State managed, in part, by supplementing its roster with junior college prospects such as Fou Fonoti.
Playing athletic guards like Dan France and Donovan Clark out of position was another way the Spartans addressed injuries and attrition at offensive tackle. Bowling Green transfer D.J. Young also provided a lift by starting at right tackle in 2009 and left tackle in 2010 for the co-Big Ten championship team.
Finley wasn’t the first physically impressive four-year tackle Michigan State signed during Dantonio’s first eight years. As first- or second-year prospects, Henry Conway, Skyler Burkland, Zach Hueter and David Barrent all appeared to have upside as tackles. Primarily because of injuries, none of those players lived up to their potential at the position.
MSU had room for only one offensive tackle-sized recruit for 2013, and went with Finley.
Finley is expected to help MSU’s offensive tackle depth in 2015, but has yet to make a strong push for a regular role, with two members of the previous year’s recruiting class - Jack Conklin (left tackle) and Kodi Kieler (right tackle) - nailing down starting jobs.
With Conklin a possibility to move on to the NFL after this season, MSU badly needs Finley and/or freshman David Beedle to develop rapidly at offensive tackle in preparation for 2016, and also to provide depth insurance for 2015. Finley needs a big August from himself, and MSU needs it from him. And MSU can’t afford any foul-ups from Kieler or Beedle.
FAILING IN FLORIDA?
Michigan State signed three players from Florida in 2013 - DT Noah Jones, DT Devyn Salmon and CB Justin Williams. One is already out of the program (Jones) and the other two are not in the three-deep, and seem unlikely to ever make a dent in the playing group.
Lack of punch from Florida in this class fits a Michigan State recruiting trend that has been a curious shortcoming for Dantonio’s Spartan program since he took over.
Back in 2007, one would have assumed that if MSU was going to rise and become the only program in the nation to finish ranked in the Top 5 in 2013 and 2014 then the Spartans would surely have gotten help from the nation’s top producer of individual, play-making talent - Florida. But that’s not been the case.
Dantonio signed zero players from Florida in 2007 and ’08.
Since then, MSU has signed 12 players from Florida. None of them have earned All-Big Ten honors. None of them nailed down long-term, full-time starting job.
Only three of the 12 have started at any time (DE Denzel Drone, DB Jairus Jones, WR Macgarrett Kings).
Four have failed to earn a letter (WR Juwan Caesar from the Class of 2011, Ezra Robinson from the Class of 2010, Noah Jones from the Class of 2013, and DB Justin Wilson signed in 2010 and never enrolled after being “uninvited” by MSU coaches for reasons that remain unclear).
As for the other Floridians, Salmon is repping at No. 2 center but is actually the No. 4 man at that position on the depth chart (behind guards Brian Allen and Benny McGowan, who are the true in-case-of-emergency replacements in case anything happened to Jack Allen). And Justin Williams is in danger of sinking to fourth string at CB this month.
The top hopes from Florida of the Dantonio era are redshirt freshmen: RB Madre London and LB T.J. Harrell. Both are second-string and likely to be in the playing group this fall.
Junior college transfer Miguel Machado played high school ball in Miami but was recruited by MSU out of Pasadena (Calif.) Community College. He is second-string right tackle this month and likely to be in the playing group this fall.
If Machado, Harrell and London crack the playing group this fall, it would mark the biggest push of Florida talent of the Dantonio era - something that is long overdue, and unaided by this Class of 2013.
STARTING SOMETHING IN ILLINOIS
The signing of defensive end Demetrius Cooper in this class marked a rare (at the time) recruiting victory for Michigan State over Notre Dame in the Chicago area, and foreshadowed more activity for MSU in Chicagoland in 2014, ’15 and ’16. In 2014, MSU landed Chicagoland prospects Brian Allen, Chase Gianacakos, Matt Morrissey and Enoch Smith. MSU beat out Notre Dame, among others, for Smith.
MSU then scored a major recruiting victory in Chicago the following year with Chicago DePaul Rivals250 d-end Raequan Williams (over Iowa, Penn State and Tennessee). MSU followed up in the spring and summer of 2015 for the class of ’16 in the Land of Lincoln with victories over Notre Dame (and others) for Rivals100 DE Josh King of Hinsdale and three-star safety Kenney Lyke of Palatine, plus major recruiting victories in four-star DT Naquan Jones of Evanston, stock-on-the-rise three-star DT Mike Panasiuk of Roselle Lakepark and Hinsdale o-lineman Matt Allen.
Prior to the recent hot streak in Illinois - which began with Jack Allen and Cooper in this class - Michigan State woefully underperformed as a recruiter in Illinois for decades.
Splitting Illinois into two regions with defensive line coach Ron Burton working in Chicago and quarterbacks coach Brad Salem active in the suburbs has produced much better results in the state since Michigan State restructured its coaching staff when former Illinois recruiter Dan Roushar left to become an assistant for the New Orleans Saints in 2013. Roushar did a good job of establishing networks in Illinois, but wasn’t a high-pressure salesperson in the recruiting game. Burton and Salem quickly took advantage of some of Roushar’s groundwork and finished on key recruits in 2013.
SUBSTANDARD IN OHIO
Michigan State has gotten great production from three-star prospects from Ohio during the Dantonio era. And it all started back in 2007 with Greg Jones, BJ Cunningham, and Chris L. Rucker -- each from Ohio, each a middle tier recruit, and each drafted by NFL teams.
Solon (Ohio) High’s Darian Hicks and Warren Harding’s Jalyn Powell - a pair of three-star Ohioans - looked like future stars for the Big Ten’s best defense at this time last year. However, Hicks lost his starting job late in the 2014 season and isn’t a favorite to win that role this fall. Powell transferred from Michigan State to Youngstown State after spring practice in 2015 rather than attempt to compete as a second-string ‘star’ linebacker this fall.
The Spartans did not go toe-to-toe with heavyweight programs for the signature of either, but each player was a top recruiting priority. Michigan State offered both Hicks and Powell early in the recruiting process.
Ohio State signed 10 of the top 50-ranked players in Ohio, according to Rivals.com rankings. Back in 2013, it was still vertically impossible for MSU to beat the Buckeyes in Ohio for a recruit. Meanwhile, the University of Michigan signed nine Ohioans, most of which have done next to nothing in Ann Arbor thus far (DB Dymonte Thomas, LB Mike McCray, TE Jake Butt, DE Taco Charlton, DB Ross Douglass, LB Ben Gedeon, RB Deveon Smith, WR Jaron Dukes and DB Reon Dawson). Charlton and Butt remain solid prospects, but the rest are on par with MSU’s Jalyn Powell and Trey Kilgore as unproductive (thus far) exports from The Buckeye State in 2013.
As for in-state talent, it’s still too early to come to final conclusions on the high school talent that came out of the state of Michigan in 2013, but it’s safe to say the early returns on that group has been underwhelming.
Eight-teen players from Michigan signed with major conference teams in 2013. MSU signed three of them: No. 4-ranked Reschke, No. 9. Finley, No. 11 Holmes. MSU offered scholarships to only four others: No. 1 Steve Elmer, OL, Midland (Notre Dame), No. 2 Shane Morris, QB, Warren De La Salle (Michigan), No. 5 David Dawson, OL, Detroit Cass Tech (Michigan), No. 6, Wyatt Shallman, Ath., Detroit Catholic Central (Michigan).
Elmer is starting at Notre Dame. The rest of those guys haven’t done a thing.
Few Wolverine in-state players from 2013 have made a dent (Morris; No. 3 CB Jourdan Lewis, Detroit Cass Tech; Dawson; Shallman; No. 7 DB Delano Hill, Detroit Cass Tech; No. 10 WR Csont’e York; No. 17 WR Da’Mario Jones, Westland John Glenn; No. 21 TE Khalid Hill, Detroit Crockett).
Hill has been pedestrian at the safety position. Lewis started seven games at corner last year and seems to have a promising future. MSU offered neither player.
Meanwhile, two in-state players who were not offered by MSU or Michigan are heading into fall camp as first-stringers at Florida and NC State.
Cameron Dillard, an offensive lineman from Canton, Mich., was ranked No. 12 in the state by Rivals.com. He is No. 1 for the Gators at center, this month.
And Joshua Jones, a DB from Walled Lake Western, ranked No. 8 in the state by Rivals.com, is a first-string safety at NC State.
If MSU had more scholarship room, perhaps the Spartans would have offered Dillard and Jones and gotten them both. However, MSU has scholarship room to add Canadian project James Bodanis at the 11th hour, thus MSU theoretically had room for Dillard or Jones.
Dillard is short, at 6-foot-3. MSU already has enough short o-linemen in the Allen brothers. MSU has been trying to make a movement toward tall offensive guards and offensive tackles on its roster, with the exception of the Allen brothers. Thus, MSU - with limited scholarship room - didn’t offer Dillard.
Finley was the only offensive lineman MSU offered in 2013. Bodanis was originally signed as a defensive lineman.
MSU already had a commitment from Jalyn Powell when Jones camped in East Lansing. Jones was solid, with a tall, strong frame, but not quite impressive enough, apparently, to get the scholarship offer.
WINS AND LOSSES
As Max Bullough and Kyler Elsworth were preparing for their final season, the Spartans addressed the future at Mike linebacker with the addition of a pair of upper tier prospects in Birmingham Brother Rice’s Jon Reschke and Cincinnati Archbishop Moeller’s Shane Jones. Reschke was the higher-ranked of the two players, and he created more buzz during his first 12 months on campus, but the signature of Jones represents a bigger recruiting victory for Michigan State given that Reschke has family ties to the program through his father Paul, a walk-on during the 1970’s. Michigan State beat out Michigan, Nebraska, Penn State, and Louisville for Jones, who had close to 20 offers from power conference programs representing the Big Ten, ACC, SEC, Big East, Big 12, and Pac 12.
A shoulder injury caused Reschke to miss most of last year. Surgery caused him to miss most of winter conditioning and virtually all of the spring. His development needs to pick back up this August.
Jones carried a bit too much baby fat and not enough quickness during his first two years on campus. He made progress in the spring and repped as a No. 2 MLB while Reschke was out, but he needs to find another step of quickness in order to be able to play the position effectively for a top-ranked defense.
Fort Wayne, Ind., five-star linebacker Jaylon Smith (Notre Dame) and five-star Georgia defensive tackle Montravius Adams (Auburn) gave Michigan State enough consideration to check out the campus as unofficial visitors, but neither of those elite national recruits qualify as big recruiting losses because the Spartans never had a realistic shot of landing either. Both literally and figuratively, Texas offensive lineman Caleb Benenoch (6-5, 310) was Michigan State’s biggest recruiting loss during this cycle. He decommitted from MSU and signed with UCLA.
Unlike Big Ten rivals Iowa, Northwestern, and Nebraska, Michigan State has not had much of an active recruiting presence in Texas in past decades. So it came as some surprise when Benenoch committed to Michigan State in March of 2012 as a junior.
Almost immediately after his commitment, Benenoch had friends and family advising him to reconsider. When he re-opened the recruiting process in May, he effectively cut ties with Spartan program. Thus, the Texan had committed to MSU and then eliminated MSU, all before the summer camp season. That was new ground, all the way around.
Bennenoch was a solid three-star prospect at the time of his commitment to Michigan State. He was given a fourth star by both Rivals.com and Scout.com. His jump up the rankings was validated by on-field success at UCLA as a rare true freshman starter at offensive tackle in the fall of 2013. He also started all 13 games for UCLA last year, earning Honorable Mention All-Pac 12 honors.
Michigan State’s lack of depth at the offensive tackle position made losing Benenoch more painful than it might have been if he had played a skill position.
Michigan State got a couple of intriguing prospects out of Wisconsin in RJ Shelton and Dylan Chmura, and for a while the Spartans were sitting in good position to sign Dairy State defensive ends Alec James and AJ Natter, who were ranked No. 2 and 3 in Wisconsin by Rivals.com. Michigan State, Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri finished runner-up for Natter, who committed to Nebraska as a junior in April. James committed to Wisconsin over finalists Notre Dame, Michigan State, Oregon and TCU in August.
Michigan State’s three-year run of signing the No. 1 ranked player in Michigan came to an end when Midland’s Steve Elmer (6-6, 305) selected Notre Dame over Michigan State, Michigan, and a host of other major conference scholarship offers. A US Army All-American and consensus Top 100 recruit as a senior at Midland, Elmer validated his rank by starting four games as a true freshman in 2013 and then starting all 13 games in 2014.
INTERESTING WR STUDY
It was a terrible year for wide receiver recruiting in the Midwest in 2013. The lack of upper tier or middle tier recruits in the Midwest in 2013 offers an interesting case study today of which programs in the Big Ten were able to make good evaluations amid a slim pool of talent.
The results: Penn State, Michigan State and Ohio State have so far easily out-produced the rest of the Big Ten with meager WR pickings in the region, with Iowa a distant fourth and the rest of the pack shooting blanks. (More on this later).
Penn State went outside the region to sign a three-star WR who turned out to be a stud (Virginian DaeSean Hamilton). He led the Big Ten in receptions last year with 82.
Ohio State signed a junior college transfer (Corey Smith), who had 20 catches last year and figures to be a second-string contributor this year. Smith is originally from Akron, and went to OSU via Grand Rapids Community College and East Mississippi Community College.
Shelton ranked sixth for the Spartans in receptions last year, but he has EASILY been the most productive, four-year Midwestern WR recruit in the Big Ten from the 2013 recruiting class. That’s how thin the Midwestern talent pool for WRs was in 2013.
MSU signed three sleeper WR prospects in 2013: Jay Harris, Trey Kilgore and former running back prospect R.J. Shelton.
MSU’s class gained help at the WR position with walk-on Tres Barksdale (Solon, Ohio), who is working as a third-stringer on the 2015 depth chart and has been ahead of Kilgore throughout their careers.
Give credit to Michigan State in manufacturing a WR out of Shelton, and a functional walk-on, when there was so little to choose from in the region.
As for Harris, MSU parted ways with the Pennsylvanian a few months after he signed in 2013 due to unsavory conduct as a rap musician.
Kilgore has been unable to break into the playing group and isn’t regarded as a major threat to do so this year.
THE THREE WRS THAT GOT AWAY
Aside from the three sleeper wide receivers that Michigan State signed in 2013, the Spartans offered scholarships to only three other wide receivers from the Midwest that year: Laquon Treadwell (Crete, Ill./Ole Miss), Kevin Gladney (Akron, Ohio/Nebraska) and Tyler Boyd (Pittsburgh, Pa./Pitt).
MSU didn’t come close to getting any of the three.
Treadwell ran a strange recruitment and signed with one of the more suspicious programs in the country.
Boyd - the nation’s No. 103 recruit - visited Pitt, Tennessee and West Virginia.
Gladney made an early-summer commitment to Nebraska, with Iowa placing second.
Treadwell was SEC Freshman of the Year in 2013, and is an All-America candidate this fall after missing all but nine games last year with a broken leg.
Boyd was first-team all-ACC last year with 78 catches. He was suspended for a little more than a month by new Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi this summer after a June arrest for driving under the influence. Boyd was reinstated in late July. Narduzzi said it remains to be seen whether Boyd will be suspended from playing in games this season.
Gladney has yet to register a reception at Nebraska.
On signing day in 2013, there seemed to be a shortage of quality WRs coming from the Midwest. Two-and-a-half years later, it still looks that way, with no sleepers emerging to belie the recruiting analysts. There are still two or three seasons left to be played for this talent pool, but the group as a whole has gotten off to a very slow start.
Of the Midwestern wide receivers who signed with Big Ten schools in 2013, only three have more than four career catches. And two of them (Ohio State’s Smith and Iowa’s Damond Powell) were junior college transfers.
That leaves only one four-year Midwesterner with more than four career catches thus far - RJ Shelton. He has 20 receptions, 301 yards rushing and 992 yards in kickoff returns. Shelton has seven career TDs - four rushing, two receiving and one kick return.
Powell is an interesting case. The former juco transfer had 18 catches last year for Iowa and signed a free agent contract to try out with the Arizona Cardinals in the spring. He made news on July 24 when he was shot outside his home in South Toledo, Ohio. The injuries to his face sustained via the drive-by shooting were not life-threating.
BEST WRS IN THE MIDWEST
The terrible productivity of Midwestern receivers from the class of 2013 makes it compelling to go back and check the regional rankings from that year and see what happened to them.
Only seven Midwestern WRs ranked among the Top 75 WRs in the country, according to Rivals.com.
A rundown of the top-ranked Midwestern WR recruits of 2013:
1. Laquon Treadwell (6-3, 198, Crete, Ill., ranked the No. 1 WR in the country) signed with Ole Miss.
2. Tyler Boyd (6-1, 170, Pittsburgh, ranked the No. 12 WR in the country) signed with Pittsburgh.
3. Shelton Gibson (6-1, 175, No. 15 in the nation, Cleveland Heights), signed with West Virginia. MSU did not offer. He also visited Ohio State, Kentucky and Tennessee. He had three catches for the Mountaineers in 2014.
(Treadwell, Boyd and Gibson were the only WRs in the Midwest with four- or five-star Rivals.com status).
4. Rob Wheelwright (6-3, 185, No. 49 WR in the nation, Columbus Walnut Ridge), signed with Wisconsin over Michigan, Nebraska and others. MSU did not offer. Wheelwright had one catch for Wisconsin in 2014.
5. Kevin Gladney (6-1, 182, No. 59 WR in the nation, Akron Firestone) signed with Nebraska over Iowa. He has yet to make a catch for the Huskers.
6. Jaron Dukes (6-4, 200, No. 60 WR in the nation, Columbus Marion Franklin), signed with Michigan. MSU did not offer. Dukes has yet to make a catch for the Wolverines.
7. Csont’e York (6-3, 185, No. 75 WR in the nation, Harper Woods Chandler Park Academy), signed with Michigan. MSU didn’t offer. York is no longer with the team, after being charged with assault for sucker punching a man outside an Ann Arbor bar in 2014, and incident that was caught on video surveillance and went viral.
(Rivals.com ranked Shelton as the No. 31 running back in the nation, and the No. 4 player in Wisconsin).
WHAT ABOUT IN-STATE?
With the Midwest so weak at WR in 2013, what did the state of Michigan look like at that position? Below is Rivals.com’s four WRs who ranked among the state’s overall Top 30 (MSU didn’t offer any of them a scholarship):
1. Csont’e York, Michigan.
2. Da’Mario Jones (6-2, 185, Westland John Glenn), signed with Michigan. He one career reception.
3. Gairus Coleman (5-9, 180, Farmington Hills Harrison), did not sign with a Division I school.
4. Jamari Eiland (5-11, 175, Plymouth-Canton) signed with the University of Buffalo.
As for in-state MAC schools, only Central Michigan signed an in-state WR recruit: Corey Willis (of Holland, Mich., High School). He had seven catches in 2014 for Central Michigan.
Bowling Green’s Teo Redding (Warren Michigan Collegiate High School) had five catches last year.
There wasn’t much available in Ohio, either. Only seven WRs made Rivals.com’s Ohio Top 75 in 2013 (MSU offered only two of them):
1. Shelton Gibson, Cleveland Heights, signed with West Virginia. MSU did not offer.
2. Rob Wheelwright, Columbus Walnut Ridge, signed with Wisconsin. MSU did not offer.
3. Kevin Gladney, Akron Firestone, signed with Nebraska. MSU offered.
4. Jaron Dukes, Columbus Marion Franklin, signed with Michigan. MSU did not offer.
5. Trey Kilgore, 6-2, 183, Cincinnati St. Xavier. He signed with Michigan State over Iowa, Kentucky and MAC schools.
6. Zachary Yousey, 6-2, 190, Columbus Harvest Prep, signed with Toledo.
7. Dan Monteroso, 6-3, 180, St. Clairsville High, signed with Purdue. He has one career catch with the Boilermakers.
What about the states of Indiana and Illinois? MSU looked there, too, and didn’t find much.
Rivals.com ranked only one WR in the Top 20 in Indiana -Isaac Griffith (6-0, 180, Fort Wayne Homestead). Griffith has yet to make a collegiate reception. He nearly drowned in Florida in 2014 due to a frightening riptide incident, when he was rescued by teammates. This spring, he was arrest for driving under the influence.
In Illinois, Derrick Willies (6-3, 190, Rock Island, Ill.) was the only WR aside from Treadwell to be ranked among the Top 30 players in the state. He signed with Iowa over offers from Iowa State and directional Illinois schools. He had four catches for the Hawkeyes last year.
In addition to Wheelwright, Wisconsin signed three-star WR recruit Jazz Peavy (6-1, 175) of Kenosha, Wis. He also had offers from Minnesota and Wyoming. He has yet to catch a pass as a collegian.
WRS FROM OUTSIDE THE MIDWEST
If the Midwest was so thin on WR talent, where did Big Ten schools go to find WR recruits in 2013?
Penn State found a gem in Hamilton, of Stafford (Va.) Mountain View. The three-star recruit was ranked No. 15 in Virginia and the No. 42 WR in the country. He also visited Wake Forest and had offers from Illinois, Boston College, Michigan State, Virginia and Virginia Tech.
MSU was stingy with WR scholarship offers in 2013. The fact that the Spartans offered a guy who ended up bing a live sleeper for the Nittany Lions lends credence to MSU’s reputation as a keen evaluator of talent.
Hamilton was productive at Penn State, but that doesn’t mean he would have caught 80-plus passes for other programs. Penn State was low on talent when Hamilton arrived, making it easier for him to make an early splash. But there’s little doubt that every other program in the Big Ten would take him now, if they could.
Other notable out-of-region WR signings in the Big Ten in 2013:
* Iowa signed unranked Matt Vandeburgh (6-1, 185) out of Brandon, S.D. He had no other Division 1 offers. But he played as a true freshman and has 22 career catches.
The combination of South Dakotan Vandeburgh and juco transfer Powell made Iowa one of the more successfully resourceful schools in the Big Ten in 2013 for WR recruiting - although neither has been a game-breaker.
* In addition to Corey Smith, Ohio State also signed James Clark, a four-star recruit from New Smyrna Beach, Fla. He has yet to make a collegiate catch.
* Purdue went to Atlanta, Ga. to sign three-star DeAngelo Yancey (6-2, 200) over Ole Miss, NC State and Wake Forest. He had 12 catches last year.
* Minnesota went to Santa Clarita, Calif. to sign Drew Wolitarsky (6-3, 215). The three-star recruit was ranked No. 90 in California and picked the Gophers one week prior to signing day after also visiting San Jose State. He also had offers from Hawaii and San Diego State.
Wolitarsky had 10 catches in 2014 for the Gophers.
* Illinois signed Washington D.C. native Martize Barr out of Iowa Western Community College in 2013. Barr had 19 catches in 2014.
The Illini also went to Mansfield, Texas to sign unranked, two-star WR recruit Marchie Murdock in 2013. He also had offers Colorado State and San Diego State. He had one catch in 2014 for the Illini.
* Northwestern went to Houston, Texas to sign three-star WR Macan Wilson (6-1, 180). He also had offers from California and Tulsa. He has yet to make a collegiate catch.
Michigan, Northwesten, Nebraska and Indiana have yet to get a reception from the WRs they signed in 2013 - from the Midwest or otherwise.
LESSONS LEARNED FOR MSU
Although MSU’s Class of 2013 as a whole is a weak one, the Spartans managed to avoid a hole at the WR position in this class despite the severe shortage of WR talent close to home. The Spartans did it by manufacturing RB prospect Shelton into a multi-threat WR.
MSU did not sign a WR in 2014.
That created a two-year recruiting span in which Shelton was the only functional WR Michigan State signed.
MSU learned from the lessons of 2013 two years later when only one Midwestern WR was rated with Rivals.com four-star status. MSU recruited that WR hard, but Miles Boykin (6-3, 225, New Lenox, Ill.) picked Notre Dame over the Spartans.
The resourceful Spartans responded by branching out of the Midwest to sign a pair of extremely promising WR prospects in Felton Davis (6-4, 17, Highland Springs, Va.) and Darrell Stewart (6-2, 195, Houston). Stewart is already impressing observers during summer workouts as part of the incoming true freshman class.
CAMP SNAPSHOT: D-LINE
MSU has made huge noise with d-line recruiting for the 2014, ’15 and ’16 classes. However, the Spartans were 1-for-4 in defensive line recruiting in 2013, the final season Ted Gill was on staff as d-line coach before he was fired and Ron Burton came aboard.
Of the four d-linemen that MSU signed in 2013, only Demetrius Cooper is still with the program. He is expected to be in the rotation at defensive end this fall, and could possibly start.
As for the other three, Floridian Noah Jones battled accountability issues and had to transfer to a junior college after failing to keep pace, academically. Devyn Salmon moved to the offensive line where he is repping as the No. 2 center. University of Toronto transfer James Bodanis, a late, desperate addition to this recruiting class, was hoping for a third-year of eligibility for 2015, but didn’t receive it. Even if he had gotten a third year of eligibility, it’s doubtful he would have earned a spot in the playing group on either side of the ball after moving to o-line last season.
Jones and Bodanis were lower tier recruits.
MSU took a long look at a solid cast of d-line campers earlier in 2013 before settling on Jones and Bodanis. Among the campers:
Patrick Dougherty (Indiana), James Connor (Pittsburgh), Luke MacClean (Pittsburgh), Dawaune Smoot (Illinois), and Nate Jeppesen (Toledo). They each signed letters of intent with Division 1 programs after failing to earn offers at Michigan State’s June camp.
Connor was one of the highest ranked players at Michigan State’s June camp, as the No. 26 weak-side defensive end and No. 13 player in Pennsylvania according to Rivals.com.
Connor may have worked out as a defensive lineman at Michigan State’s June camp, and was classified as a d-end by most analysts, but he wanted a shot at running back. He made good on that shot at Pitt, rushing for 799 yards as a true freshman and then 1,765 last year as a sophomore. The bruising runner is one of the top tailbacks in the country.
