Jim McElwain signed only four of 247Sports’ top fifty players in the Sunshine State, which sounds like a dud on its face. First it was all-around athlete Trevon Diggs, a 6-foot-1, 182 pounds, from Maryland, and then, on the first two days of February, a double-dip into MS to land 5-11, 174-pound, defensive back Nigel Knott and 6-7, 295-pound OL Scott Lashley.
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Gavin Ware led Mississippi State with a career-high 28 points. But for most top recruits and FBS teams, signing day is the end of the process, when all those verbal commitments become official.
Alabama’s extended season into recruiting season from the SEC Championship Game to the Cotton Bowl semifinal to the College Football Playoff National Championship Game meant coaches spent more time game planning when their competition focused exclusively on recruiting.
Jeffery Simmons spurns Ole Miss, Bama for Mississippi State: Many expected 5-star strong-side defensive end Jeffery Simmons to commit to either Alabama or stay in-state with Ole Miss. The band played Alabama’s fight song after Davis made the announcement and his mother flashed a pair of Rolling Tide gloves. Sounds like a Nick Saban defensive player, huh?
Alabama had a five-star finish and won another Rivals.com team recruiting rankings title. “It’s not even about recruiting anymore”.
If you have $5,000 and want to watch the Super Bowl at a Carolina Panthers player’s house, knock yourself out.
USC and UCLA had the Pac-12’s top two recruiting classes on national signing day, putting them among the nation’s best.
Mississippi State guard Craig Sword missed a free throw with eight seconds left, and a putback attempt by guard I.J. Ready did not fall, sending the game into overtime.
One thing that’s clear is that Houston made the biggest splash of any Group of Five program with five-star Ed Oliver’s signing.
With everything being nearly fully settled in terms of signings now, not only can we assess what individual teams were able to do, but also assess which conferences were able to get the job done as a whole and improve for the future with strong classes of incoming freshmen. “I trust him, and he’s just like a close brother to me”, Wilson told John Garcia Jr. of Scout.
This year’s class finished just outside of the top 10 much like last year, but the big difference could be geography, not the number of star recruits.
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Ole Miss Rebels (6): Ole Miss technically dropped on National Signing Day, but it was still a successful day.
