Do you guys remember when we were going to kill it with the out-of-state recruiting this year? I am old enough to remember that.
We hired Kevin Cosgrove from LSU. He would bring an immediate pipeline to Louisiana, but also his brother owned a recruiting service in the Midwest, which was going to open a pipeline to recruits up there. We offered some guys from Louisiana, some guys from St. Louis, and some guys from the Chicago area.
Then we hired Derek Jones, from Duke. Derek had some great east coast connections, although he'd never coached in Texas before. So, we offered some defensive backs in Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
I came here and pointed out that we've tried the out-of-state thing before, and it didn't work. We had some coaching connections to Louisiana, and Kliff tried to go big in there in 2014 - we ended up completely striking out (we got no commitments from Louisiana that year), and lost the mid-tier Texas recruits (to Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma State) because we were distracted. So Kliff ended up having to go heavy juco and settle for some lower-tier high school guys.
I was absolutely barbecued for criticizing the staff on this point, and emphatically assured that Matt Wells was absolutely not abandoning Texas high school recruiting - it is, after all, the lifeblood of the Texas Tech football program. "It isn't that much of a distraction to pursue and hold scholarships for the out-of-state guys", many said.
I haven't been paying much attention...Can you guys give me an update on how the out-of-state recruiting is going? Was I wrong, and did we land a bunch of out-of-state guys?Have the Texas high school recruits been rolling in as well?
I really hope I was wrong on this point. I really hope that we didn't fail miserably with out-of-state recruiting. I really hope we weren't late on some good Texas high school kids, and I REALLY hope that we didn't end up having to settle for going heavy juco and heavy transfer with this class...like Kliff did in 2014...
We hired Kevin Cosgrove from LSU. He would bring an immediate pipeline to Louisiana, but also his brother owned a recruiting service in the Midwest, which was going to open a pipeline to recruits up there. We offered some guys from Louisiana, some guys from St. Louis, and some guys from the Chicago area.
Then we hired Derek Jones, from Duke. Derek had some great east coast connections, although he'd never coached in Texas before. So, we offered some defensive backs in Maryland, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
I came here and pointed out that we've tried the out-of-state thing before, and it didn't work. We had some coaching connections to Louisiana, and Kliff tried to go big in there in 2014 - we ended up completely striking out (we got no commitments from Louisiana that year), and lost the mid-tier Texas recruits (to Baylor, TCU, Oklahoma State) because we were distracted. So Kliff ended up having to go heavy juco and settle for some lower-tier high school guys.
I was absolutely barbecued for criticizing the staff on this point, and emphatically assured that Matt Wells was absolutely not abandoning Texas high school recruiting - it is, after all, the lifeblood of the Texas Tech football program. "It isn't that much of a distraction to pursue and hold scholarships for the out-of-state guys", many said.
I haven't been paying much attention...Can you guys give me an update on how the out-of-state recruiting is going? Was I wrong, and did we land a bunch of out-of-state guys?Have the Texas high school recruits been rolling in as well?
I really hope I was wrong on this point. I really hope that we didn't fail miserably with out-of-state recruiting. I really hope we weren't late on some good Texas high school kids, and I REALLY hope that we didn't end up having to settle for going heavy juco and heavy transfer with this class...like Kliff did in 2014...
