Hokies Go Back to the Future
Brent Pry & Co. are recruiting as though winning the Commonwealth of Virginia will translate into winning on the field. But will it?
Recruiting rankings are sourced from the repository at collegefootballdata.com that I accessed via the cfbfastr API connection.
Much was made of Justin Fuente’s staff not connecting with in-state recruits and high school coaches. As I have written in previous articles, I do not think that was totally an aloofness thing. But if the following is any indication, Whit Babcock made it clear to Brent Pry that the Hokies needed to recruit better in-state during his tenure than the team did during Fuente’s. Do the Hokies risk swinging the pendulum too far in the opposite direction?
Brace yourselves. This one’s going to be heavy on maps and charts…
Evolution of the Footprint
From 2002-2015, the second half of the Beamer era, the Hokies got nearly 80% of their high school recruits from just three states - Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida - with nearly 60% of recruits coming from within the Commonwealth.
The 2016 recruiting class was split between Beamer’s outgoing staff and Fuente’s incoming one. Given Beamer’s mid-season retirement announcement, I chose to assign that class to Fuente. It could have gone either way. On the flip side, I also gave the 2022 class to Fuente, since it was just short of signed, sealed, and delivered for the incoming Pry administration. Again, a judgement call. However, by assigning those two classes to Fuente, I am actually erring on the conservative side. More on that in moment. For now, let’s get back to Beamer.
As you can see in the map below, the recruiting footprint under Beamer stretched most of the length of the east coast. Beamer nabbed 10 recruits from New Jersey, just one less than he plucked out of Georgia, a state with a much richer high school football tradition.
Outside of a few players from Indiana and Ohio, Beamer’s staff mainly stayed east of the Appalachian Mountains. In 14 years, they got one single player out of neighboring Tennessee. One! Only three players came from west of the Mississippi River.
As I detailed previously, Penn St. had already made inroads in Virginia by the time Virginia Tech hired Justin Fuente. North Carolina would add further stress from the south when the Tar Heels brought back Mack Brown. Fuente responded by expanding the recruiting footprint, but not in the way most in Hokie Nation think.
Yes, there was the whole TX2VT thing, but when you look at the above map, what do you see? I see three letters, S-E-C. In fact, if the map was unlabeled and you just told me it would represent Tech’s recruiting footprint at some point in time, I would guess the school switched conferences. Fuente signed more recruits from South Carolina and Georgia, respectively, in his 7 recruiting classes than Beamer did in his final 14. He also got a higher percentage of recruits from Florida and North Carolina.
For me it begs the question. Was it a matter of in-state recruits not being that into Fuente, or Fuente just not being that into them? Probably a mix of both, and that will be an article for another time, but my hypothesis right now is that Fuente did want the top players, but saw a lot of softness, talentwise, below the top two or three in each in-state class.
So now we get to Brent Pry and, voila, it’s back to the future, with a few notable exceptions.
First, in 2023 Pry brought in four recruits from Tennessee, one less than Fuente did in seven recruiting classes and 400% more than Beamer managed in his last 14 years. On the flip side, the 2023 class does not include any Florida recruits. I ascribe that development to two factors:
Charlie Wiles now coaches NC State’s defensive line, not Tech’s
Both Florida and Miami are in year two with their respective coaches, and Mike Norvell has the Seminoles on the upswing in Tallahassee.
One thing is for certain - Brent Pry, at least this year, is really serious about the six hour radius.
One final thing that really sticks out when comparing the recruiting footprints under the three coaches is that there were a couple of 180 degree turns in there. One must wonder how much is lost in executing those pivots. Coaches start recruiting the top players in 8th or 9th grade, meaning there are long established relationships when a coaching change occurs. Building relationships with another group of players takes time. Change your coach too many times and you’re on the path the Tennessee Volunteers traveled post-Phil Fulmer.
So Pry & Co. better get this recruiting thing right. I wonder what the numbers have to say about that…
Where Tech Scores with Highly Rated High School Recruits
In a 2011 ESPN Recruiting Nation article, Frank Beamer was quoted as saying the following about how the move to the ACC impacted the team’s recruiting footprint:
When we got in [the] ACC it opened up the Carolinas a little more for Virginia Tech," Beamer said. "When we were in the Big East we were more in the Northeast and had some success in Florida. Now we have had a really good success in the Carolinas and Florida. We have two coaches with great ties in Florida.
In terms of raw numbers, that is true. But were the Hokies getting higher ranked players from the Carolinas than they were from the Northeast? No.
Rounded to two decimals, in-state Virginia Tech recruits have averaged a 0.86 rating under all three coaches. For this series of maps, I set the median (light gray) equal to that rating. A state in any shade of maroon represents one where VT recruits had a higher average rating than Virginia. Conversely, those from states shaded orange had a lower average rating. Under Beamer, the Hokies landed higher rated recruits, on average, from B1G states (Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana) than they did from the Southeast.
Justin Fuente’s staff traded Ohio and Indiana for Texas and one-offs from California, Illinois, and Colorado. The biggest gains during Fuente’s tenure were made in North Carolina. Under Beamer, the Hokies secured commitments from 26 high schoolers from North Carolina, with an average rating of 0.86 (same as Virginia). That’s less than two per year. Fuente pulled 17 recruits out of North Carolina (a 30% increase annually), and the average rating for those players was 0.88.
While the Hokies made real gains in North Carolina under Fuente, they continued to struggle in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida with highly rated recruits. One year makes not a trend, but out of 26 signees, the class of 2023 includes only one player from South Carolina (rated 0.87 no less) and one from Georgia (0.84).
As the above map shows, when Pry’s staff ventured outside of Virginia, it was generally to get higher rated players. Time will tell if Tennessee becomes to Pry what North Carolina was to Fuente and New Jersey was to Beamer. Time will also tell the impact of this tighter recruiting footprint on the field. The renewed focus on in-state recruiting has been universally lauded by the fan base, but I’m not convinced there is enough good, homegrown talent to support a conference title contender, much less a national title contender, without one or two strong secondary states. I’m also not sure that I’m not. Smells like a follow up article.
Qualifications and Conclusions
Obviously, high school recruiting ratings are not everything. Given that high schoolers are still growing and developing, the ratings are more a projection than anything else. While the ratings published by the major sites (247, ESPN, and On3) are directionally helpful (teams that bring in a lot of highly rated players generally win more games than those teams that do not), their accuracy is so-so at best, although one would like to think the internet and sites like Hudl have aided the cause.
On the most recent Techsideline podcast, Chris Coleman expressed the opinion that both of the McDonald twins as well as Keli Lawson are NFL prospects. Those three players were some of the lowest rated players in the 2021 class:
Keli Lawson - 0.8431
Jordan McDonald - 0.8255
Jayden McDonald - 0.8146
Coleman pointed out, and I agree, that Covid impacted evaluations for that class, which likely hurt these three guys, but realistically, it’s not like the McDonalds were going to rise from a low 3-star level to become 4-star players (in the eyes of the recruiting sites) based on their senior season at Salem High School (the one in Southwest Virginia, not Virginia Beach).
So yes, Tech has gotten its share of diamonds in the rough, but overall, getting higher rated recruits is key to returning the program to prominence. By eschewing a wider recruiting footprint, Pry & Co. are taking on added risk. Should the next few classes in Virginia and surrounding states prove to be light on talent, Pry might not make it to the end of his contract. On the other hand, if talent edges up in the region, the Hokies could be very well placed to capitalize and sign better recruiting classes than have been the norm in recent years.