BCS tie helping UC with recruits (&USF ref.)

[Brad]

BCS tie helping UC with recruits

Column by The Post's Lonnie Wheeler

It was a humbling afternoon in central Pennsylvania, but from it, Mark Dantonio took heart.

It wasn't just that Penn State, after blowing away his Bearcats, went on to win the Orange Bowl, finishing 11-1 and re-establishing its high station on the national scene. The encouraging thing was that Joe Paterno's team did it with players who had experienced a whole lot of what the University of Cincinnati's suffered through seven times last year.

"In (2003), Penn State was 3-9 and played with those same players for four years," Dantonio pointed out. "This past year, they played with I think 10 of those seniors on defense."

So goes the plan at UC. It's one thing to finish 4-7, another to do it when you start freshmen at quarterback and all over the defense.

Nobody once said that necessity is the mother of experience; but if somebody had, it might have been Dantonio. He liked last year's recruiting class, but not enough to let it immediately take over his team, all things being equal. That happened out of had-to. Cincinnati was entering the Big East under the worst of circumstances.

But the great thing about youth is next year. The great thing about extreme youth is the year after that. Which brings us to recruiting.

It has been completed, and Cincinnati's class, like last season's, has been ranked last in the league. And yet, regardless of what the geeks think of Dantonio's 18-player harvest, the UC coaches clearly succeeded in sneaking their way into loftier circles this time around.

Freddie Lenix, the hyper-fast linebacker, had originally signed with Ohio State but never enrolled there. Ben Guidugli, Gino's brother from Highlands High School, chose Cincinnati over Colorado. Defensive lineman Ricardo Mathews backed out of a commitment to Georgia Tech.

Southern Cal showed an interest in Canadian safety Peter Carriere. Wisconsin was heavily involved with defensive back Aaron Webster. Running back Jacob Ramsey was hounded by Minnesota. Defensive end Chris Harrison was offered by Illinois.

None of the above puts the Cincinnati program on West Virginia's heels - some think the Mountaineers will be ranked No. 1 in the country prior to next season - or even Louisville's; but it's a long way from the days in Conference USA. The cachet of a BCS conference has put the Bearcats in homes they couldn't have gotten in before with flowers and pizza.

"Last year, we were able to do that, as well," Dantonio said. "But it was more widespread this year. There are still other guys that we may compete for with a MAC school, or whatever. But for the most part, you need to be able to compete against the other BSC schools.

"It seems to me, honestly, that we were competing the most against North Carolina State and Maryland and some fringe Big Ten schools. With N.C. State, there were four or five players who took visits to us who also had visits with them. It's starting to happen for us slowly but surely. We're developing new rivalries, and I believe we're in a transition phase."

In college football, the schools you play against and recruit against are not necessarily the same. And sometimes they are. Louisville recruited Lakota West receiver Josh Chichester and tight end Zack Meagher of Glen Este. West Virginia signed defensive back Robert Williams out of Withrow. The Bearcats, in spite of their inside-out philosophy, ended up with more guys from Jacksonville (three) than Cincinnati (Guidugli and Brandon Miller, another defensive back from Withrow).

Tim Hinton was the UC assistant coach who navigated the recruiting congestion of Florida, where virtually every school in the Big East - not to mention the SEC and ACC - could be found. The Florida presence, after all, was the whole point in accepting South Florida into the conference.

That, however, is a decision which might be second-guessed, considering that UC lost at least one recruit to the Bulls, whose entire recruiting class, save one Louisianan, was hollowed out of the home state. If USF were still saddled with the lesser clout of Conference USA, wouldn't some of those players be available to the likes of Cincinnati?

Wouldn't they, in fact, be leading the Bearcats to a bowl game in about 2008?

Contact Lonnie Wheeler at lwheeler@cincypost.com.

Story Link