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Player Development

daddyhoosier

Junior
Aug 31, 2019
1,046
2,880
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iufb.net
The Hoosiers seem to be intentional about finding players who are diamonds in the rough and who can be developed. Offensive Lineman Luke Haggard is a Junior College transfer from California who is looking to prove he has what it takes to succeed at a Power 5 school. Virginia Running Back Tim Baldwin and Texas Defensive Back Bryson Bonds are both players who may be better than their player ratings indicate. And Indiana was the only Power 5 school to offer scholarships to Brady Feeney, Cameron Knight, Dexter Williams and Ty Wise.

Detractors will view these player development projects as a negative and say it reflects Indiana’s ability to land top talent. And to be fair there is indeed some risk involved with this approach. However programs like Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan State have made hay out of developing 3-star players into excellent Big Ten football players. These schools have been able to do more with less (in terms of 4 and 5-star prospects) and this is a great model to follow for a school like Indiana that is fighting to move up the proverbial food chain.

Flipped
The Indiana staff was able to flip several players who had verbally committed to other schools. Tim Baldwin had committed to Michigan, AJ Barner to Ohio, Brady Feeney to Rice and Damarjhe Lewis to Auburn. I’m never going to be a big fan of players verbally committing and then changing their minds but this is reality in 2019 (soon to be 2020).

HFB's Complete Signing Day Coverage:
Part I - https://bit.ly/2Se0tBm
Part II - https://bit.ly/35KNbjY
Part III - https://bit.ly/2PF7A4e
 
I quickly glanced at a few of the player's senior highlights made available by Rivals.

The big DT from Georgia looks very good. We should be happy he's heading to Bloomington, IMO. Dexter Williams looks like he could win games in the Big Ten for Indiana. It's kind of difficult to accurately gauge his arm talent from the grainy video, that needs to change! Tim Baldwin looks legit and is a curious case regarding his overall rankings. Someone stated he is a two star on this site, but a three star and a four star on two other sites!! I've never seen such a disparity in many years of following this stuff. Was surprised to see the nastiness of Cam Knight...he looks like a player.

I'm starting to think recruiting is an even bigger crapshoot than I ever thought before. There's so many different opinions and ideas as to why one guy is ranked higher than the next guy. The case of Baldwin makes you wonder if these so called recruiting experts have a clue.

Indiana is a developmental program and will be for years to come. As long as we target players with good upside and have expert strength coaches in place, we can have success. Recruiting rankings as an IU fan can ruffle your feathers, that's for sure.
 
Yeah Tim Baldwin and Rashawn Williams are both head-scratchers. Williams was literally ranked the 40th best player in the nation back in April when he committed but has dropped like 200 spots. I've seen Baldwin listed as a 2-star too though the consensus seems to be high-level 3.

There is definitely a lot of BS and politics involved in all of this and you can't convince me that the ratings aren't manipulated on some level to sell subscriptions to the larger and more interested fan bases.

One more note on Indiana's 2020 class. Three players are from the Detroit area - Rashawn Williams, Lem Watley-Neely & Verbal Commit Coleon Smith. Williams and Watley-Neely are from Detroit proper while Smith is from Belleville, MI which is about 35 minutes southwest of Detroit. This could be a new fruitful area Indiana is beginning to cultivate.
 
Yeah Tim Baldwin and Rashawn Williams are both head-scratchers. Williams was literally ranked the 40th best player in the nation back in April when he committed but has dropped like 200 spots. I've seen Baldwin listed as a 2-star too though the consensus seems to be high-level 3.

There is definitely a lot of BS and politics involved in all of this and you can't convince me that the ratings aren't manipulated on some level to sell subscriptions to the larger and more interested fan bases.

One more note on Indiana's 2020 class. Three players are from the Detroit area - Rashawn Williams, Lem Watley-Neely & Verbal Commit Coleon Smith. Williams and Watley-Neely are from Detroit proper while Smith is from Belleville, MI which is about 35 minutes southwest of Detroit. This could be a new fruitful area Indiana is beginning to cultivate.

I think Trouble was one of those guys who peaked athletically a little sooner than his peers so he looked fantastic sophomore and junior years. Now some of those guys caught up a little and he has stayed mostly the same player. He is still really good and a great get for IU. Give him a year with Ballou and co and he will terrorize the B1G.
 
Why are there no Florida kids in this class? The Florida kids are a HUGE reason for this year's success, what in the world happened?

Indiana desperately needs to tap back into the Sunshine state and its abundance of talents.
 
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I have seen several people on here say there are zero players in this class are from Florida. Jalen Williams is still verbal at this point but he is from Florida. That said the 2019 class had 5 players from Florida, the 2018 Class had 8 and the 2017 group had 9. So definitely a drop-off - hopefully this trend will not continue.
 
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I quickly glanced at a few of the player's senior highlights made available by Rivals.

The big DT from Georgia looks very good. We should be happy he's heading to Bloomington, IMO. Dexter Williams looks like he could win games in the Big Ten for Indiana. It's kind of difficult to accurately gauge his arm talent from the grainy video, that needs to change! Tim Baldwin looks legit and is a curious case regarding his overall rankings. Someone stated he is a two star on this site, but a three star and a four star on two other sites!! I've never seen such a disparity in many years of following this stuff. Was surprised to see the nastiness of Cam Knight...he looks like a player.

I'm starting to think recruiting is an even bigger crapshoot than I ever thought before. There's so many different opinions and ideas as to why one guy is ranked higher than the next guy. The case of Baldwin makes you wonder if these so called recruiting experts have a clue.

Indiana is a developmental program and will be for years to come. As long as we target players with good upside and have expert strength coaches in place, we can have success. Recruiting rankings as an IU fan can ruffle your feathers, that's for sure.
I too think there is a lot of politics to get more attention from the larger fan bases in the rankings. I also believe that it is extremely difficult to compare kids in different areas of the country. Maybe easier if they attend some of the camps where the rafters can watch side by side but if not, how do you decide where to put a kid?
 
Yeah Tim Baldwin and Rashawn Williams are both head-scratchers. Williams was literally ranked the 40th best player in the nation back in April when he committed but has dropped like 200 spots. I've seen Baldwin listed as a 2-star too though the consensus seems to be high-level 3.

There is definitely a lot of BS and politics involved in all of this and you can't convince me that the ratings aren't manipulated on some level to sell subscriptions to the larger and more interested fan bases.

One more note on Indiana's 2020 class. Three players are from the Detroit area - Rashawn Williams, Lem Watley-Neely & Verbal Commit Coleon Smith. Williams and Watley-Neely are from Detroit proper while Smith is from Belleville, MI which is about 35 minutes southwest of Detroit. This could be a new fruitful area Indiana is beginning to cultivate.

David Ellis is from (I believe I’m remembering correctly here) Shelby Township, a northern suburb of Detroit.
 
I think Trouble was one of those guys who peaked athletically a little sooner than his peers so he looked fantastic sophomore and junior years. Now some of those guys caught up a little and he has stayed mostly the same player. He is still really good and a great get for IU. Give him a year with Ballou and co and he will terrorize the B1G.
I have no idea if he peaked at a younger age relative to the others in his class, but Rivals has him listed at 6'0, 178lbs while the IU release on the signees has him at 6'2, 200lbs so he's clearly still filling out and Dr. Rhea and Coach Ballou haven't even gotten him on campus.
 
The one thing no one talks about is the fact that we haven't had season opening suspensions due to off-season transgressions. That seemed to be a common theme and off the field issues were frequent with most all of our more recent coaches. It will most likely happen at some point, of course, but to have limited it as much as CTA has, shows the kind of staff and support he has put in place.

We don't see starters leaving Indiana for greener pastures. I can remember guys like John Kerr who made the All B1G Freshman Defensive POY and instantly took those accolades to Ohio State.....as a walk-on. The reason these guys are staying is because they enjoy the staff, the program and the teammates coach has placed around them.

What CTA has done with the program has been pretty impressive. I trust his judgement on who he is bringing in. He was getting top talent when we were trash so I am of the belief that he believes we have depth at a lot of positions so he really focused on getting players for the OL and filling a couple specific holes with this class. FL recruits or not, I trust in coach at this point.
 
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I think Trouble was one of those guys who peaked athletically a little sooner than his peers so he looked fantastic sophomore and junior years. Now some of those guys caught up a little and he has stayed mostly the same player. He is still really good and a great get for IU. Give him a year with Ballou and co and he will terrorize the B1G.
And wasn’t he named like the top receiver at a camp this summer? I smell something fishy with his drop in the rankings too. They seem to look at it, as others have said, that he didn’t commit to a big boy so we better drop him
 
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