LA_Mustang wrote:Unless we become JUCO U for a couple of years, the cupboard will be bare.
If this is true, I certainly hope the CofC has already identified a short of candidates.
I think we can relax (at least a little bit) on this subject. I've covered the Mustangs for maybe 15 years, and these kids are the most athletic we've had in that time. We're bigger, stronger, faster, deeper and that's a fact.
In my
OPINION, our recruiting issues don't stem from lack of effort (every bye week you'll see a stream of coaches exiting Ford in coat and tie hitting the recruiting trail, every day June is rolling tape on recruits or opponents by 4 a.m.), it's in how we've allocated our scholarship offers to address injury and the natural turnover by position and the fact that we don't have hundreds of kids trying to walk on every year like you might at a large state school (because of SMU's high tuition, EVERY scholarship must count). And also throw in our admissions issues, which admittedly are WORLDS better now, but we're paying in 2013 for admissions decisions that were made in 2009-2011.
This year we're pretty deep (at least for SMU) at the skill positions. Where we're getting hammered is on the offensive and defensive lines. For example, we saw this one coming years ago when we weren't recruiting enough kids to replace an OLine that included LeRibeus, Beachum, Tennison, McJunkin and Brooks, who all "grew up" together and graduated together.
But if you look at where any of those guys started (with the exception of LeRibeus), you've got to be really excited about Briggs (6'5 300+ and maybe the most athletic lineman we've had since the DP), Chamagua (6'6 300+), I hear a lot of optimism about Fister, Lasecki (who as a
sophomore has broken a bunch of all-time team strength records), McCarty (a true freshman who is 6'4 290 and is already getting some PT, Rice (a freaky good athlete for a big guy who earned PT as a true freshman), Jerry Saena (who is now 6'5 and skinny at 315; doesn't know what he's doing yet but is growing into a scary specimen), Weeks (6'5 300+ and is only a sophomore).
I can go on, but I point that out to demonstrate that there are no more 5'10 offensive linemen (all of whom were listed at 6'2 on the roster
). So whether it be June or someone else, from a personnel standpoint, we're light years ahead of where we've been. In fact, you could make the case that this team might even be pretty attractive to a potential coach due to the youth of some many of these players.
