Recruiting Rankings: one last look at Rutgers and the Big Ten

It’s over. Finally!

Now comes the interesting part: seeing how all these kids evolve and develop as actual college players. But until they start to do that, we have rankings and stars and tweets to keep us, err, entertained.

Yesterday, in sort of a “rapid reaction” post, Aaron Breitman asked fans to grade the new class. And the vast majority (about 62%) - super majority if you’re politically inclined - thought it was a B or B+.

But what were the final rankings from the services? Glad you asked....

After a very fast start - with conference rankings as high as number 3 back in August, the Knights slowly came back to earth. The early high position came from the early commits. And keep in mind, those kids who committed early stayed on board. Even after 2-10. Even after a pretty significant turnover in coaches. Give some credit to the staff for keeping those players.

Bottom line: Rutgers finished around No. 10 in the Big Ten. Not what people wanted but better than some expected. It was better than Minnesota and Iowa (on average, Iowa with smaller classes) and a tad behind Wisconsin.

NOTE: This table has been updated to correct for my failure to double check the spreadsheet. My apologies to everyone who can do math!

I was somewhat surprised that Illinois did as well as it did, jumping past Rutgers late in the process. But, of course, the biggest surprise to everyone - even on a national level - was Maryland. It’s very large class (29 commitments, different from our 29 signees which included transfers) helped. It had a few more 4-stars than Rutgers which boosted its standing.

On the national scene, Rutgers finished in the mid-low 40’s, interestingly ahead of Illinois in two of the services.

Gerry DiNardo

BTN’s DiNardo tweeted out his last summary on Monday, the same day we did our last ranking post. This is what he reported:

And how does that stack up with the rest of the conference?

If only New Jersey was farther west....