Musings: Stars don't mean as much in Ames, CCL, Cory Ihmels

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DBQR4CY

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Jun 7, 2013
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Ankeny(By way of Dubuque)
ISU's recruiting classes have been getting better under CPR. People seemed to have forgotten that ISU was in horrible shape when Chizik left. There was some talent there but not much. There has been a lot of changes and a building up of sorts going on over the last few years. ISU has improved their play on the field with 3 bowl births. CPR has become famous for his post game speeches on Youtube and pulling off an upset each year as well. Then, look at the new facilities ISU has added this past year along with the new video board over the North end zone. Those are big time additions for the program. These are long term investments that will pay off and ISU will start to be able to land 4 star's more often and more high end 3 star's.
Maybe we as ISU fans we have been spoiled by CFH and his high risk high reward recruiting, but that's basketball and a much smaller team. CPR and staff have had a difficult time building depth in some key areas in their time at ISU which have been at QB, WR, and D-line. However, at this point in a couple of years there will be depth in these positions. The D line is young, but sounds promising and who knows that the future holds for our two young QBs. This is also why Lazard is so important to ISU and to keep him as a commit. He represents another step forward for the program. Lazard will help recruit other players (as long as he isn't a bust) and will perk up the ears of other players when considering the program their going to play for.
ISU should be building to attract a few 4 star and high end 3 star recruits. It will always be difficult for ISU to garner major consideration from the elite recruits. That's okay. ISU is a blue collar program, it keeps them hungry.
 

Aclone

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Dec 14, 2007
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Des Moines, Ia.
I'm curious--who was the coach between Ihmels and Bill Bergan? CW mentioned in the article that Ihmels took ISU track "to a new level"...
 

isu81

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Mar 6, 2013
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ISU's recruiting classes have been getting better under CPR. People seemed to have forgotten that ISU was in horrible shape when Chizik left. There was some talent there but not much. There has been a lot of changes and a building up of sorts going on over the last few years. ISU has improved their play on the field with 3 bowl births. CPR has become famous for his post game speeches on Youtube and pulling off an upset each year as well. Then, look at the new facilities ISU has added this past year along with the new video board over the North end zone. Those are big time additions for the program. These are long term investments that will pay off and ISU will start to be able to land 4 star's more often and more high end 3 star's.
Maybe we as ISU fans we have been spoiled by CFH and his high risk high reward recruiting, but that's basketball and a much smaller team. CPR and staff have had a difficult time building depth in some key areas in their time at ISU which have been at QB, WR, and D-line. However, at this point in a couple of years there will be depth in these positions. The D line is young, but sounds promising and who knows that the future holds for our two young QBs. This is also why Lazard is so important to ISU and to keep him as a commit. He represents another step forward for the program. Lazard will help recruit other players (as long as he isn't a bust) and will perk up the ears of other players when considering the program their going to play for.
ISU should be building to attract a few 4 star and high end 3 star recruits. It will always be difficult for ISU to garner major consideration from the elite recruits. That's okay. ISU is a blue collar program, it keeps them hungry.


Agree with a lot of what you say, but not sure you can just say the recruiting has improved that much with PR over Chizik, or that the stars don't correlate to success on-field. Clearly, he's a better coach of the players he gets. Since 2002, our team recruiting rankings on Rivals are:

2002: 30 Mac
2003: 46 Mac
2004: 48 Mac
2005: 58 Mac
2006: 63 Mac
2007: 60 Cheez
2008: 62 Cheez
2009: 73 PR
2010: 60 PR
2011: 51 PR
2012: 87 PR
2013: 58 PR

Average rank is 58. I would ventire to say our national ranking over those years was about the same. And the best of these years were the late (not last) years of Mac, which correlate to the 2002-2004 recruiting years, which were ranked a little higher than most..
 

jbhtexas

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Oct 20, 2006
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Arlington, TX
If someone had access to a database with the proper information, it would be interesting to compile an average "star" value for each team in the Big 12, rank the teams according to their star rating, and then compare that ranking to how the teams finished in the conference. Maybe do it for 5 years or so, and see if there is any correlation between the "recruiting star" quality of the players on a team and how that team actually finishes the season.
 

Luth4Cy

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Sep 19, 2012
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Ames, IA
Agree with a lot of what you say, but not sure you can just say the recruiting has improved that much with PR over Chizik, or that the stars don't correlate to success on-field. Clearly, he's a better coach of the players he gets. Since 2002, our team recruiting rankings on Rivals are:

2002: 30 Mac
2003: 46 Mac
2004: 48 Mac
2005: 58 Mac
2006: 63 Mac
2007: 60 Cheez
2008: 62 Cheez
2009: 73 PR
2010: 60 PR
2011: 51 PR
2012: 87 PR
2013: 58 PR

Average rank is 58. I would ventire to say our national ranking over those years was about the same. And the best of these years were the late (not last) years of Mac, which correlate to the 2002-2004 recruiting years, which were ranked a little higher than most..

Lots of four stars who didn't pan out in those years listed. I don't even remember some of these names so I'm not sure if they didn't pan out or if they left school. My point is though that there are guys who were highly rated and did a lot for the team rankings but ended up doing nothing on the field.

These are all the four stars by the way (unless I missed some). So I'm by no means saying that all of these guys didn't pan out.

2002: Austin Flynn, Stevie Hicks, Curtis James, Collin Menard, Frederico Samuel, Max Steward
2003: None
2004: Webster Patrick
2005: Paul Fisher, Walter Nickel
2006: None
2007: J.J. Bass
2008: Sedrick Johnson
2009: Darius Reynolds
2010: Anthony Young, Chris Young
2011: None
2012: None
2013: Jake Campos
 

CtownCyclone

Really Strong Cardinals
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SuperFanatic T2
Jan 20, 2010
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Where they love the governor
the replacement of Ihmels will actually be in charge of 6 sports for Directors Cup. Important hire that can increase visibility of I-State. Excited about it!

Pollard won the NCAA national title in the 5,000m and was a Cross Country All-American back in the day, so I'm sure he's got a special interest in this position.
 

Frak

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Apr 27, 2009
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CW, here's a question that I've been wondering: How much say does Yancy have in recruiting? Does he just work with what's given to him by the staff? Or does he weigh in on who gets offered? Or maybe he actually reviews film on his own and makes recommendations to the staff?
 

SpokaneCY

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Apr 11, 2006
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Spokane, WA

Honestly all the discussion about whether stars mean something or nothing boils down to wins and losses in the conference. Thus far, our conference record would indicate recruiting body type hasn't taken us to the next level. Don't know when (or if) we get there but I do think that being Iowa State and having some of our built-in limitations we shouldn't expect a consistent top tier program. So long as we maintain our integrity and put a hard-working bunch of kids on the field I'm fine with sporadic successes... For now.