Texas recruiting has never been the foundation of CU success

[Buffnik]

California and Colorado have always been more important. Before Barnett's 2002 class (10 Texans), Chuck Fairbanks had brought in the largest Texas class in CU history (8). McCartney's largest Texas class was 5, while he brought in as many as 12 in a single year from California or Colorado. Neuheisel, as you would expect, also recruited more prospects from California than Texas (though he did bring in 2 more Texans than Coloradans). Even with two huge Texas classes (10 and 8), Barnett still brought in an equal number of Californians during his time at CU (and a lot more Coloradans than either). Hawkins' largest Texas class is 3, largest Cali class is 8, and largest CO class is 5 (plus the focus on building the CO walk on program).

Ringo has a great blog on this today (with the statistics provided by Plati): http://buffzone.pmpblogs.com/2010/03/04/texas-recruiting-rarely-big-for-cu/

Basically, we need to recruit Texas because of the amount of talent there. But averaging 3 or 4 guys a year from TX should be the expectation. From California, we should be pulling twice that per year (6 to 8). Colorado should go no lower than 4, but can realistically go as high as 10 (5 to 7 on average). And while Texas is the least important of the 3 for CU recruiting, it's still one of the "Big Three" for us that, together, make up as much as 65-80% of our recruiting classes.

 

[Darth Snow]

Great. move to the pac 10!

 

[sackman]

While this is true, there's no disputing that some of the greatest players to come through here have come from Texas. McGhee, Williams, Gurode, Detmer & Crosby, just to name a few.

I think you build your foundation around Colorado kids, and add in kids from Cali and Texas to bolster the depth of each class. If CU lands the top six players from Colorado every year, we'd be in a position to compete with just about anybody.

 

[absinthe]

While this is true, there's no disputing that some of the greatest players to come through here have come from Texas. McGhee, Williams, Gurode, Detmer & Crosby, just to name a few.

I think you build your foundation around Colorado kids, and add in kids from Cali and Texas to bolster the depth of each class. If CU lands the top six players from Colorado every year, we'd be in a position to compete with just about anybody.

Not really, first of all assuming normal attrition kids not panning out what have you that 24 kids would be 8-10 contributors, even if we had the 8-10 top college players from Colorado over the past 4 years we still wouldn't be able to compete with "just about anyone." We need our hero's from out of state and our local kids to be the depth.

 

[JimmyBuff]

While this is true, there's no disputing that some of the greatest players to come through here have come from Texas. McGhee, Williams, Gurode, Detmer & Crosby, just to name a few.

I think you build your foundation around Colorado kids, and add in kids from Cali and Texas to bolster the depth of each class. If CU lands the top six players from Colorado every year, we'd be in a position to compete with just about anybody.

CU needs to find a way to get 3 out of the Top 100 in Texas every year. That's what Slick Rick was doing with Nunez, Warren, Gurode, Weisinger, Lewis, etc.


I agree that California will probably have the most players but you can't just ignore Texas...

 

[aik]

CU needs to find a way to get 3 out of the Top 100 in Texas every year. That's what Slick Rick was doing with Nunez, Warren, Gurode, Weisinger, Lewis, etc.


I agree that California will probably have the most players but you can't just ignore Texas...

3 of the Top 100 yearly would be solid. A must for the Big 12 when every team you play is hitting the state hard, and don't tell me with a jump to the Pac-10 there wouldn't be a handful of kids who'd rather go to Boulder and play road games in Cali than stay in tornado alley for four years.