In recruiting, when one door closes, another opens

[Dalton26 16,891]

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BLOOMINGTON — This is a recruiting story.

Saturday, when IU opens Big Ten play against No. 17 Michigan State, the Hoosiers will have to contend with Spartans redshirt senior wide receiver Monty Madaris (among others). Madaris comes to Bloomington already enjoying a career year, with 12 catches for 174 yards.

But if things had gone according to Kevin Wilson's plan, this weekend would look very different.

In the summer of 2011, Wilson and his staff were in the thick of their first full recruiting cycle, trying to build an initial class that would help overhaul their roster.

The centerpiece of that class, at least for a time, was Columbus East quarterback Gunner Kiel, the eventual IndyStar Mr. Football. Kiel committed that summer, and stayed with the Hoosiers through part of the fall, before eventually reopening his recruitment.

On the night of his senior season opener, a still-committed Kiel spoke enthusiastically about the role he hoped to play in building that class. He mentioned two names in particular, top targets he wanted to help recruit: Midlothian (Ill.) Bremen running back David Smith, and Cincinnati Moeller wide receiver Monty Madaris.

 

By this point, Indiana already had two wide receivers committed (Caleb Cornett, from Ben Davis, and Kevin Davis, from Warren Central). And the Hoosiers were pushing hard for Smith and another Chicago-area running back, Oak Forest's Tevin Coleman.

It's important to note here that football recruiting doesn't exactly work like basketball recruiting. There can be package deals, and talent generally follows talent, but elite players get much more exposure to one another in hoops than they do football. Jason Spriggs, for example, told me the day he committed that he had a only a vague idea of who Kiel was, despite the fact that Kiel himself had just committed days earlier, and played in the same state.

But Kiel's point was plausible: As perhaps the country's best pocket passer, he wanted to help spearhead a statement recruiting class for his future program.

Obviously, none of this went according to plan.

 

Kiel wound up decommitting in October, setting himself on a journey that wound through commitments to LSU and then Notre Dame, where he spent one season before transferring to Cincinnati.

Smith kept the Hoosiers in the frame for a while, and then Oklahoma offered, superseded basically everyone else and picked up his commitment. He spent three seasons in Norman, appearing just once before announcing he planned to transfer to Jacksonville State, an FCS program, in 2015.

Madaris stuck at Michigan State, playing at wide receiver, on scout teams, special teams, even at cornerback. In his final season, he has become one of Tyler O'Connor's favorite targets.

 

 

Where IU went in place of those three, fans will remember well. The Hoosiers did land Coleman, who authored the program's first-ever 2,000-yard season on the ground before leaving early for the NFL. They eventually replaced Gunner Kiel with Nate Sudfeld – that class was always going to include at least one quarterback – and Sudfeld eventually became the program's all-time leading passer.

And while IU worries over Madaris, Michigan State will need to sweat Ricky Jones, a 5-10 wide receiver from Sarasota, Fla., that the Hoosiers landed late in the 2012 cycle. After a slow start to his redshirt senior season, Jones had 208 receiving yards against Wake Forest on Saturday, and currently has 1,192 receiving yards on his career ledger.

Does all of this mean Indiana won? Debatable. Recruiting is an inexact science, and always will be. For example, a nasty ankle injury early on could easily have derailed Jones' career, IU would likely have taken Smith and Coleman if it had the option, and I'm sure I could find you cases of Wilson taking a player who never quite met expectation, while turning down another who did.

This is just a recruiting story.

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

 

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/indiana/hoosier-insider/2016/09/26/indiana-hoosiers-gunner-kiel-nate-sudfeld-monty-madaris-ricky-jones/91108882/?hootPostID=f03fd93456224b09ad8e9335804e5ae6

 

Pretty good read, and very interesting to see how that class turned out.

[HoosierAloha 29,900]

13 minutes ago, dalton26 said:

 

http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/indiana/hoosier-insider/2016/09/26/indiana-hoosiers-gunner-kiel-nate-sudfeld-monty-madaris-ricky-jones/91108882/?hootPostID=f03fd93456224b09ad8e9335804e5ae6

 

Pretty good read, and very interesting to see how that class turned out.

That class yielded the all-time leading passer and single season leader in rush yards.  That was a solid class...

[Dalton26 16,891]

6 minutes ago, HoosierAloha said:

That class yielded the all-time leading passer and single season leader in rush yards.  That was a solid class...

Agreed. I'm sure everyone(myself included) freaked out when Kiel decommited but looking back I think we definitely got the better end of that deal. Those two along with Spriggs alone made that a solid class.