There’s been some discussion about the current class with only one commit on the year, it seems as if things are going slow. Some lesser thought-of teams are ahead of Texas Tech in national rankings, so the question that we have is whether or not it is time to panic. So, I took it upon myself to look at the last 4 classes. I did not include the 2019 class because that seemed like a wonky class because there was a new coaching hire and it was just weird. So I went back to the last four classes to see when players actually committed.
A couple of caveats need to be mentioned. I generally consider the recruiting cycle to be from March to February in a given year. I mentioned the players that committed before or after those times, but didn’t include them in the table below. Again, they were mentioned, but just not included in the table. There were some wonky things even though I didn’t include the 2019 class, which we’ll discuss and they threw off the averages. They’re still included, but just weird (we’ll discuss below).
Let’s go through the data!
2018 Class
March: 0
April: 0
May: 1 (Corey Fulcher)
June: 6 (Alan Bowman, Jaylon Hutchings, Weston Wright, Troy Bradshaw, Clayton Franks, and John Scott)
July: 3 (Kesean Carter, Hakeem White, Xavier Benson)
August: 2 (Demarcus Marshall and Sterling Galban)
September: 0
October: 0
November: 2 (Erik Ezukanma and Myller Royals)
December: 0
January: 1 (SaRodorick Thompson)
February: 2 (Ta’Zhawn Henry and Patrick Curley)
2017 Class
* Three players committed in 2015, Xavier Martin on 7/28/2015 and Jack Anderson on 10/6/15 and one player early in 2016, Dawson Deaton on February 14, 2016. Additionally, two players signed in May of 2017, which is really late, Quentin Yontz and Thomas Leggett
March: 0
April: 0
May: 2 (Quincy Addison and Bronson Boyd)
June: 3 (Casey Verhulst, Will Farrar, and Adrian Frye)
July: 0
August: 1 (John Davis)
September: 0
October: 2 (Dominic Panazzolo and Riko Jeffers)
November: 1 (Nelson Mbanasor)
December: 8 (Vaughnte Dorsey, McLane Carter, Desmond Nisby, Tony Jones, Jacob Hines, Jaylon Lane, Octavious Morgan, and Dakota Allen)
January: 0
February: 0
2016 Class
* Da’Leon Ward committed on February 18, 2015.
March: 0
April: 1 (Giovanni Pancotti)
May: 6 (Antoine Wesley, Jett Duffey, DeQuan Bowman, Derrick Willies, Mychealon Thomas, and Brayden Stringer)
June: 7 (T.J. Vasher, Ivory Jackson, DeMarcus Fields, Houston Miller, Johnathan Picone, Noah Jones, and Jordyn Brooks)
July: 3 (Nick McCann, Travis Bruffy, and Zach Adams)
August: 2 (Clarence Henderson and Joe Wallace)
September: 0
October: 1 (Kevin Moore)
November: 2 (Desmon Smith and Bailey Smith)
December: 0
January: 0
February: 1 (Douglas Coleman)
2015 Class
*Corey Dauphine committed on February 3, 2014 and Paul Stawarz committed on March 28, 2015.
March: 0
April: 3 (Trace Ellison, D’vonta Hinton, and Breiden Fehoko)
May: 1 (Jonathan Giles)
June: 0
July: 1 (Donner Dyer)
August: 1 (Madison Akamnonu)
September: 1 (Broderick Washington)
October: 0
November: 2 (Terrence Steele and Quan Shorts)
December: 3 (Tony Brown, Christian Taylor, Lonzell Gilmore)
January: 3 (Keke Coutee, Cody Wheeler, and Donta Thompson)
February: 3 (Paul Banks, J.F. Thomas, and Jamile Johnson)
Cumulative Data
Well, well, well. So the first thing is that normally, players don’t commit in March or April. Texas Tech had 3 players commit in 2015, but in 2018 and 2017 there were none, and one in 2016.
Things start to pick up in May, but things were somewhat thrown off by the 2016 class in May where there were 6 commits in May. I think the things that’s a bit different is that JUCO commits seem to throw off the cycle. Of those 6 commits in 2016, 3 of them were JUCO guys. In the other classes, none of the commits were JUCO guys.
We’ll get to this later, but JUCO guys tend to commit in bunches.
In June, we get a few more commits and this seems to be when there’s a lot of action, except in 2015, which really didn’t come together until very late. Still though, Texas Tech would normally average a decent amount of commits in June. I think it would be completely reasonable to hope/think that June would be a good time for this staff to shine.
July was a bit weird in that in July of 2017 there were no commits, but in 2018 and 2016 there were three high school commits in each of those years. August saw action in each of the four years.
So, by the end of August, before the season starts in September, Texas Tech would average about 10.75 commits per year in their class. So, there’s work to do, but I think the staff is technically on schedule.
September is seemingly a dead month for recruiting. Only 1 commit in each of the four years and October is pretty quiet as well. Only 3 commits in all four years, one of which was Panazzolo.
November saw things pick back up a bit with about 2 commits that month, and then we get to the wonkiest month, December. In December of 2017, David Gibbs and the entire staff decided that they would need all of the JUCO players, so they had 8 of them commit, yes, all 8 commits were JUCO players in the 2017 class. That’s just weird. In December of 2015, all of those commits were high school players.
In January and February, you saw guys trickle in, one or two a month. By this time, the class should be pretty well done. And this is why I didn’t include 2019 because in 2019, Texas Tech had 5 commits in December and then had 4 more in February.
Anyway, this was fun for me to put this together, more for my own knowledge than anything else. I was personally curious if things were on pace and that’s probably the case. Things will have to pick up here pretty soon, but that’s to be expected. I do know that the coaches are all out on the road so it’s pretty normal to expect commits to happen in the next few months. I’d also add that this was essentially Kingsbury’s timeline. I didn’t go further back (partly because of lack of time) because the recruiting landscape can change pretty quickly, with an emphasis on early enrollees and the new December signing date makes things different. I’d also add that just because this is when Kingsbury had his commits doesn’t mean that there should be an expectation with Matt Wells. He may work on an entirely different timeline, one that he didn’t even work with at Utah State.
2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | Average | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
March | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – |
April | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1.00 |
May | 1 | 2 | 6 | 1 | 2.50 |
June | 6 | 3 | 7 | 0 | 4.00 |
July | 3 | 0 | 3 | 1 | 1.75 |
August | 2 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1.50 |
September | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.25 |
October | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0.75 |
November | 2 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1.75 |
December | 0 | 8 | 0 | 3 | 2.75 |
January | 1 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1.00 |
February | 2 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 1.50 |