You know, I think I’ve forgotten to give Coach Jamie Dixon and his staff their due on the recruiting job they have done. This is 2 straight years of a strong recruiting class. DeGroat may not have stepped in there like expected and it took Benjamin a little more time (not to mention injuries), but the Pitt coaches have done an outstanding job. Pitt has made smart hires in the coaching and support staff to create access to the more fertile recruiting areas.
The additions of Levance Fields and Trevor Ferguson make this a very strong class. Ferguson was a bit of a surprise addition and being the first recruit Pitt has gotten out of Florida since I don’t even know.
But during his senior season at Oldsmar Christian Academy in Pinellas County, Fla., Ferguson averaged 26.0 points, 11.0 rebounds and 7.5 assists per game to lead the Eagles to the Florida Class A quarterfinals.
Larry Bache, Ferguson’s coach at Oldsmar Christian Academy, which finished the season ranked No. 2 in Class A and No. 9 overall in Florida’s high school rankings, called Ferguson “phenomenal.”
Ferguson, Bache said, has fully recovered from a freak accident two years ago in which he broke both of his wrists when he got entangled in the basket after dunking the ball and landed on his hands.
“If I’m the coach on the other team, the first question I’m asking is, ‘Who can guard him?'” Bache said. “He has speed, he can post you up and he can dunk. Your only prayer of stopping him is with a 6-6 two-guard who’s fast. He’s just an impossible matchup.”
Maybe a bit of hyperbole, but after watching Pitt get torched repeatedly by players who could go inside and out this season it’s nice to think the team might have one for itself.
These two additions, along with essentially the final grades on the recruits by scouting groups, put Pitt in or around the top-25 in recruiting classes.
Unless there is a late addition — Pitt has one scholarship remaining and the spring signing period ends in the middle of next month — Dixon’s second recruiting class is complete. According to recruiting services, Pitt’s class is among the top half in the Big East Conference and a few rank it as a top 25 class nationally.
Pitt’s class is ranked No. 13 by Hoopscooponline and No. 25 by Rivals.com. Three players are ranked among the top 100 in the country, according to Rivals. Young, a 6-foot-7, 215-pound forward from Hargrave Military Academy, is No. 71; Biggs, a 6-8, 260-pounder from Don Bosco Prep in New Jersey, is No. 78; and Fields, a 5-10, 196-pound guard from Xaverian High in Brooklyn, N.Y., is No. 88.
“Solid is the word that comes to mind,” [Jerry] Meyer[, Scout.com’s national recruiting analyst,] said of Pitt’s class. “They filled every position, except a true center. They added players that match their physical style of play with Biggs and Young. In Fields, they got a tough, gritty point guard in the mold of Krauser, only Fields is smaller than Krauser. And with Trevor Ferguson, they picked up a real good shooter, something that they’ve really needed there. I don’t think there’s any one player who makes this class. I just think it has five solid players.”
According to the sidebar on the article, Scout.com has Pitt out of the top-25 in their rankings. Interesting to take a look at the sidebar to get an idea of the variance and natural difficulty in ranking the classes. It’s always easier at the top. Louisville has only a small range difference of 1 to 5. Cinci and DePaul each make only one of the 3 lists. Marquette is anywhere from 13 to 23.
No matter, there are 8 teams for next year’s Big East that can make a case to have a top-25 recruiting class. The thing to watch is what the teams get out of the players.
UConn, Cinci, Louisville and Syracuse have the coaches with the longest and strongest track records of getting their talent to perform (in Cinci’s case there is something of a caveat limiting to the regular season). I don’t add Marquette because Crean just doesn’t have the years to be placed there, but he’s fast earning the reputation to get discussed.
DePaul just lost their head coach to Virginia so they are a question mark.
Notre Dame and Mike Brey have shown real signs of underachieving with talent in the 4-5 years. Pitt and Dixon are incomplete since it is still too early to tell.
