The House of Blue

agreed, but teams like Boise have proven that you can compete and win with "under the radar" guys if you know how to evaluate them properly. We did a similar thing (not quite to the same level) in 2007. If Joker is finally able to have success similar to Brooks with under the radar kids, he will start landing 4 stars much more frequently. Joker and his staff recruit well. They just need the w's behind the program to start reeling in the big fish.

I'm not sure exactly what this thread is supposed to accomplish, but only one of Kentucky's recruits (Sterling Wright) in the class that officially reported today was lower than a 3-star recruit. Three of them were 4-stars. Of the players who are committed for the 2013 class, all of them except for David Washington (who hasn't been rated) are three stars or above.

but the teams Boise has fielded recently were good enough to compete in the SEC. Not saying they'd win the conference, but they've been good enough to play with anyone in the country and have a shot at winning, and they did it with under the radar guys. That's my point.

Boise St. wins with speed, not power. SEC has speed and power.

Joker has without a doubt increased the talent level in this program. This year is a year for those guys to get some experience and get ready to contribute while coming up with some solid wins and overall playing well. Next year will be the year and yes most of our guys are 3 star guys. Its about evaluating players for this staff and having fewer misses than everyone else. Offer sheets are a much better indicator of recruiting than stars and rankings. You also have to get guys eligible and get high character guys that love football and are willing to put in the work. The difference between a guy like Alex Smith and a guy like Randall Cobb tells the majority of the story. The most important factor in my mind is getting guys who have a dream to play in the NFL. That pushes players IMO to achieve at a higher level than everything else. You also want to get guys that are bought into the program. That sums it up for me.

Matt...yu may be looking at a different rating service but aren't the following kids rated below 3 star right now:

- Boynton
- Day
-McGinnis
- Battle
- Phillips
- Jev Smith

Maybe there has been an updated ranking I'm not aware of. But to the OP comments...only 5 or 6 of our current verbals were also recruited by BCS mid to low programs (Maryland, Ga Tech, NC State, Wake, Ole Miss, etc..) Over half at this time were holding offers from schools like UAB, MTSU, Ga St, UCF, .....you could squeeze in a Cuse (Even though they are in BCS...they basically suck and are in BIg East..which is basically not a BCS conference to me..haha). The competition of our kids isn't impressive to say the least.

Some of them, sure. We have a few highly sought after kids, though, which I notice wasn't mentioned in your post. We're still after other highly recruited players as well. We certainly haven't finished out the class with 13 commits.

In the short term, August isn't the end of the recruiting period. Who knows what offers will come later in the process? Dyshawn Mobely comes to mind immediately.

In the long term, offers don't mean a damn thing. Production on an actual college football field does. Looking at a recruiting class in August and declaring it unacceptable is foolish.

A few yrs ago 2* players made up almost half of the recruiting class every yr. I don't like that so much. But recently we only have been bringing in 1 or 2 per yr......I have no problem with that.

We all want UK to sign 25 five-star players every yr, but that isn't realistic. UK will always be mainly in the "player development" category. It will be rare that we get the players that are ready to go right away.

Let's look at the rankings this year shall we? Let's look at the 24/7 composite rankings. Bell is our lone 4 star so far, and then we have 11 3 star players, and then the lone unranked player is Washington, a JUCO who we could all pretty much agree would be in the rotation had he made it here on campus to begin with. So how are our guys flying under the radar? Some of these guys you speak of had programs like Auburn and South Carolina wanting them to hold off their decisions but they went ahead and pulled the trigger for UK. I'm sorry, but 12 out of 13 being 3 star and above is not very far under the radar. They are on the radar screen now, we just got to them first.

I would love to have the recruiting classes that Alabama, SoCal and Notre Dame get every year. I think you'd be a fool not to. However, that's not happening, and I am pleased with the progress we are making on the recruiting road. Our teams are getting better and deeper. We can win with these kids. We just have a slimmer margin for error.

I am not an absolute supporter of this coaching staff, in that I believe thier teams have underachieved on the field. However, they have done an outstanding job of finding good players who have "flown under the radar". Many of these guys have had good to great careers at Kentucky and gone on to play in the NFL. Unfortunately several of our "4 star" players have not had that kind of success. I don't see how anyone can fault our staff's recruiting. Our talent has gradually improved over the past few years, unfortunately our on the field performance has not reflected it. Hopefully that will change Sept.2.

Bingo. With the coaches in place (from Joker to the assistants), we are on our way to 5 straight years.