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DEL.ICIO.USRicht discusses class of 2008
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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A sampling of what UGA coach Mark Richt had to say about Wednesday’s signees:
— On the areas Georgia focused on this recruiting season: “What we do is almost look out two years in advance. We try to target the number of guys in each position. We usually go out a couple of years and say two years from now these seniors are going to be gone. What is it going to look like? Then we get a feel for how many guys we need to get to reach a target number. We have a target number, give or take. It’s not 100 percent. There is only going to be four quarterbacks or five quarterbacks, whatever it is. We have a certain number that is a goal at each position. That is kind of how we base it.
“Sometimes towards the end if you hit every number right where you target it, that works out great. Sometimes you didn’t get as many as you wanted at certain positions so you start looking at the best available athlete. It is definitely an inexact science. We do have a plan and we try to stay within one or two of a target number at any given position.”
— On Georgia’s feeling going into signing day: “I really haven’t had to do much recruiting when you get into the home visits at this point. I think every single house that I went to the young man had already been committed. Obviously we were not recruiting as much as we were celebrating the decision that had already been made. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing, just enjoying each other’s company, getting to know each other a little bit better. It is a time of celebration for these families and young men and for Georgia. That’s kind of what has been going on.”
— On recruits committing earlier and earlier: “It’s the way things are going now. You can hardly keep it from happening. High school coaches and players are visiting more. A lot of parents are taking young men on that tour in the summers. They are trying to target the schools they are interested in and maybe doing a day’s worth of camp or maybe just visiting people and getting to know them. There are a lot of unofficial visits going on in the summer now.
“So we do know more about these guys faster than we used to. I think the access to video is just so much better than it used to be. We certainly have great relationships with our high school coaches across the state and in areas out of state. When you begin a cycle of getting your class wrapped up relatively early, at this time of the year you spend a lot more time with junior recruiting. It used to be that in the spring you go evaluate the juniors. Now everybody is evaluating juniors right now. It’s not just us.”
— On the detriment of recruiting too early: “The biggest problem I see is trying to see the entire pool of athletes at any one position before you start targeting them. Let’s say there are ten out there at a certain position. You might have enough time to evaluate the first five and you think all those guys are worthy of an offer because you think they can all get the job done, but you haven’t seen the other five yet.
“Sometimes you can get a bunch of guys committed before you see the pool. When we do offer a young man this time of year, I’ll tell the staff let’s be certain that if we offer this young man and he commits that we are going to be excited about it. We are not throwing out as many offers as some other schools because we do want to see the pool. There are some guys who we feel strongly enough about to offer early. You don’t want to offer until you feel very confident that he is the type of player, person and student that you want.”
— On Georgia’s balance across the board between wants and needs: “Right now I think we are real healthy. I am not going to say that something couldn’t happen at a position to put us into more of a dire strait. You are usually in a dire strait when not only do you need linemen or a certain position, but those guys need to play right now. That is when you really have reached a point that you shouldn’t reach.
“We got to that point last year, and by the grace of God we were able to not only get the players we felt we needed, a tremendous amount of good-looking linemen, but also a lot of them had to play for us and we came through with a season that was outstanding. I never would have predicted that it could have ended like that. It went like I thought.
“I thought we would start out a little rough, and I thought we would get better as the season went on, but I didn’t predict everyone else to lose a couple of games and us to be in the position we ended up in. It’s one thing to need a certain amount of guys at a certain position. It is another thing for them to have to go play for you right away. That’s where we were with linemen, and I’m hoping we don’t have to be in that position again at any position.”
— On what new tight ends coach John Lilly brings to the staff from a recruiting standpoint: “It is obvious John’s track record as a recruiter is outstanding. He has always done a tremendous job at Florida State as the recruiting coordinator and also has a recruiter. Everybody knows that not one man does all the work. Rodney (Garner) is always free to let everybody know that we all recruit here. We all get the job done.
“The recruiting coordinator probably gets too much credit sometimes or too much blame sometimes, but everybody has to get the job done. John as an individual recruiter has done a fantastic job. He is going to fit in very well here with the type of man that he is and the type of coach that he is. We certainly didn’t bring in Coach Lilly because he is a great recruiter and that is the only reason we brought him in.
“He is an outstanding person and he is going to buy in to the way we do things around here. He is an outstanding coach. If you are going to be an outstanding coach you have to be an outstanding recruiter. He cares about the guys he coaches, and I admire that about him.”
— On assistant coaches recruiting in designated geographical areas: “Everyone has an area he is assigned to and he is going to work that area and try to locate the talent base and make his evaluation or at least bring tape in to where we can evaluate it as a staff. We do most of our evaluations as a staff. Some people break it down to offense and defense. We feel like there is enough crossover athletes that a guy could be something special at another position or more than one position.
“We also want everyone to know who we are recruiting. If it is just pigeonholed to just one guy, there are not many relationships going on there. Once we target a player in a certain area, that coach still recruits him, but he is kind of tag-teamed with the guys who coach his position. You have the area coach who is recruiting him and the position coach who is recruiting him, and of course I will also recruit him. We definitely do it as a team, as a unit.”
— On establishing a recruiting base in the state of Georgia: “Our philosophy is we must recruit our state. We must scour every school in the state and find the best players who are qualified and are the type of young men we want to have. If we go out of state, I don’t ever want to take a guy out of state that I could have gotten in-state. If we are recruiting a guy out of state, we think he is a guy who maybe we just can’t find within our own state. Because of that I think we’ve had a pretty high percentage of out of state guys who have been contributors for us.”
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By joseph c. childs
February 7, 2008 11:11 AM | Link to this
Thank you for the article. Now we,recurting fan, can keep up with the process as it developes in the coming year!!!
By GA Tech insider
February 7, 2008 3:41 PM | Link to this
UGAY recruits and coaches are so stupid that in times of crisis, it is all they can do to keep them selves from reverting to licking their own asses, animal like. Hey stupid UGAY spy, decrypt this “FF UU”.
By Bamafan
February 8, 2008 7:25 AM | Link to this
Hey GA Tech insider, decrypt this SHUT THE HELL UP A** HOLE!!
By mr. nice
February 8, 2008 8:37 AM | Link to this
We will see how arrogant Tech Insider is when Tech has a losing season this year and is not even eliglible for the Humantarin Bowl.
By qdawgnc
February 12, 2008 9:41 PM | Link to this
Why does techie visit our website? Is it because he’s excited about running a division 1AA offense? Is it because Pepper Rodgers is coming back to run the wishbone? or is it because the little nerd-punk feels like a loser visiting his own website? Maybe it’s because we spank you and your mama every November….