Recruiting
- Thread starter Racpack
- Start date
I can’t believe Michigan has added D’Agustino at 125. Cannon at 133, Gomez at 149, Griffith at 174 and Davidson at 285. That is incredible and they are all top 10 guys
And strangely they don’t feel like the second best team.. when in all accounts they should be..
But the point is originally the replaced 1/2 of their starting lineup. That absolutely blows my mind
Maybe times have passed me by, but I enjoyed following a guy for his 4/5 years, the ups and downs, seeing improvement, the inevitable bad loss but getting off the mat to win the next one. Hiring one year guys to place high at the NCAAs? Some guys who sweat and bled for 4 years at another university? Look, I love Yara. He's getting a graduate degree. But that should be the exception and not the rule.
Free covid year through (Spelling?) most sports for a loop.
Hopefully we will see a reduction in the amount of transfers in the sport
RU has benefitted from graduate transfers, and hopefully can fill the lineup with 1 or 2 quality graduate transfers every year (from the IVY leagues!)
That will allow us to still follow our wrestlers for 4 years
Poz (My current fav)
Shawver
Soldano
Turley
I don't see many RU wrestlers hitting transfer portals, but you never know.
Hopefully we will see a reduction in the amount of transfers in the sport
RU has benefitted from graduate transfers, and hopefully can fill the lineup with 1 or 2 quality graduate transfers every year (from the IVY leagues!)
That will allow us to still follow our wrestlers for 4 years
Poz (My current fav)
Shawver
Soldano
Turley
I don't see many RU wrestlers hitting transfer portals, but you never know.
Jackie Bouzakis is nasty on the mat and terrorized plenty of boys during her youth wrestling days.
On a side note, these articles always crack me up - “freshman” and any grade levels basically mean nothing anymore since most of these kids are single/double holdbacks (or triple!). Taina Fernandez, the other “high school freshman” phenom is allegedly 17 or 18 years old at a minimum. She’s from Puerto Rico and her birth certificate was questioned at more than just a few youth wrestling events. Heck, people don’t realize how old Bo Bassett really is - he turns 18 this summer! Whereas, Leo DeLuca never held back and is a true Junior which goes to show you how good he really is. Sorry for the digression…
Not sure what other states rules are but in NJ if you are 19 years old prior to September 1 you are ineligible for NJSIAA sports.
No need to apologize. Your response is a good read and brings to light issues that many don't realize or think about.
Forgaro is dealing with an injury and I believe Goodale brought it up prior to the Indiana dual , Casale likes to have a good time and that’s not going to work out well on the mat when you re trying to crack a big 10 line up , I would highly doubt he makes it 4 yrs on the team.
the above is from PSUfan2427 posted in the Mat Town thread
If true, another questionable recruiting judgement. It was reported that Lehigh withdrew its offer to Casale and he was asked to leave Delbarton. So Rutgers offers and an insider stated he gets in trouble prior to start of school. Now it is reported that he isn't working out. We have made so many poor decisions with questionable kids and stuck with kids exhibiting bad habits. We need to make better decisions with our financial resources.
the above is from PSUfan2427 posted in the Mat Town thread
If true, another questionable recruiting judgement. It was reported that Lehigh withdrew its offer to Casale and he was asked to leave Delbarton. So Rutgers offers and an insider stated he gets in trouble prior to start of school. Now it is reported that he isn't working out. We have made so many poor decisions with questionable kids and stuck with kids exhibiting bad habits. We need to make better decisions with our financial resources.
I’m going to assume Casale isn’t getting a ton of money because he was a late commitment but I raised concerns about bringing him on during his senior year. Lot of red flags. Around that time is when it was discussed here that we will only be recruiting kids who completely live and breathe wrestling moving forward, as opposed to guys who are simply just good at it.
I agree with your thoughts. I wonder how much time the coaches invested in coaching and managing off the mat issues (grades, drugs, girl friends, disciplinary issues, weight issues, etc) working with Casale, Alvarez, Glasgow, Aguilar, Aragona, and others. They all had red flags and we took a chance on them. It is good to give a kid a chance. But, the issues these kids had pre-Rutgers magnified once on the team and the coaches stuck with them way too long. That is a big cost in coaching kids who live and breathe wrestling. Our hard working kids were not benefited by these high school stars who didn't live and breathe wrestling.
Weight, girlfriends, and partying aren’t real issues in the real world. I don’t think the coaches should really be required to manage that. If the wrestler can’t figure it out on their own then they shouldn’t be a big 10 wrestler. Plain and simple.
I’m willing to bet if there were real drug/alcohol, academic, and mental health issues, the staff would explore every avenue possible to get the kids help.
I’m willing to bet if there were real drug/alcohol, academic, and mental health issues, the staff would explore every avenue possible to get the kids help.
That’s weird. Highly doubt he’s a top recruit. He’s an average wrestler who probably isn’t expected to be wrestling in AC this season.
Mr Smith from PA signed his papers to attend RU after his flip from Cornell. Talked to Poz today at practice. He will be in the Business Masters program next year and has two more years of eligibility after this year. He intends to compete. Clark is done for the year and will have surgery in a week or two.
Thanks for the update Bill. That is too bad on Clark. I hope his surgery goes well.
This preseason post of mine might have been off the mark by just a bit.
Why?
What makes Jersey HS wrestling great is that we have a single state champ per weight class. You’re gonna see the parochial kids in AC what difference does it make if you see them in the regions.
Tanner Hodgins for example has touches on last years state champ a week before he’ll see him in AC.
Recruit and hand pick the best wrestlers from all over the place (and then some) which leads to an all star team who crush the towns they poached from. 10 champs sounds about right.
Whether the Delbarton kids were at their local high school or Delbarton, because NJ wrestles down to a single state champ you still have to beat that kid in AC so what’s the difference?
Because a kid who’s lived in central jersey his whole life and worked his tail off took 5th in regions and doesn’t get to go to AC because some kid who got recruited from anywhere in the world and attends school in north jersey takes his spot. Didn’t JoJo Aragona win a NJ title while living in PA? It’s stupid.
I love the one state champ thing and that should never change, but just getting to AC is a major goal for most high school wrestlers. Stick all the private schools in one region and be done with the nonsense. They get to play by their own rules.
It is an accomplishment to make AC. It won’t be if you take all the good kids out of the districts and regions.
They already made it more attainable by letting top 4 in region go.
When most of us were in school they took the top 3 to states. Now top 4. I don’t think it’s a big deal. They do their best to level out the talent.
The problem is with the ability of schools to recruit from wherever they want, you’ve taken the “regional” component completely out of it
I’ve lived in north jersey my whole life, until this year if you ended up in Region 2 you had BC, st joes, and PC in the same region. You also had all of those schools in the bergen county tournament.
They broke up that region to level the playing field which makes sense. Now you only have one power parochial per region, which means theres three other opportunities to advance to AC if the parochial kid wins.
Also, these kids don’t have the super region setup that existed when I was in high school. 32 kids per weight class get to AC, how much more opportunity can the NJSIAA provide.
They broke up that region to level the playing field which makes sense. Now you only have one power parochial per region, which means theres three other opportunities to advance to AC if the parochial kid wins.
Also, these kids don’t have the super region setup that existed when I was in high school. 32 kids per weight class get to AC, how much more opportunity can the NJSIAA provide.
Again, recruiting and poaching top kids just to go back and pummel the towns you robbed of talent. It's a joke. Delbarton has won 10+ Morrus County titles with an all-star team. My favorite was in football when Delbarton was forced to play the bigger parochial schools. They whined like little cry babies, and I believe even sat out a year of playoffs in protest because it wasnt fair to them. This occurred while they were steam rolling the best local football teams in Morris County with their hand picked team.
This, 110%!!!
They separated the parochials to 1 per region, Region 2 for example used to have 3.
There’s no super region and they take the top 4 from the regions to AC. How much more watered down can they make getting to AC.
No one is saying water down the talent in AC but there has to be a better way than having kids from Tenafly and Wayne coming down to a region that is historically a central jersey division and watching one north jersey high school all star team completely run away with practically every champion in a district and a region.
It sounds like your issue is that it was easier to place in Region 5 before Delbarton showed up this year. For any HS wrestler, the Delbarton kids are the same kids they competed against in youth states, war at the shore, super 32 etc.
Again, even with Delbarton in the region there were still 3 other spots open to get to to AC. What didn’t help the publics was kids like Ortega and Skove were upset which made the result look much more skewed for Delbarton.
I have no issues with the parochials wrestling in districts and regions because it all comes down to one state champ anyway.
My bigger issue is that their seniors are 19 because they are all redshirted. If you want to be annoyed about something be annoyed about a 15 year old sophomore wrestling a 19 year old senior.
Most states have multiple champions in each weight class in part to avoid this. New Jersey takes pride in wrestling down to one champion per weight class and this is the price paid for that distinction. In a sense it’s a microcosm of what happens in college athletics with the transfer portal and NIL. The transfer rules in HS are pretty much a joke and in place of an NIL payment the HS wrestler gets a private school education.
My issue isn’t the difficulty. My issue is Delbarton doesn’t belong there
Multiple state champs in an individual sport is dumb
So it’s ok if Delbarton is in another region beating up on north jersey kids as long as the central nj kids don’t see them till AC? Your argument is basically some central jersey kid could’ve been a region 4th if Delbarton wasn’t in region 5 so it’s not fair?
Wrestling isnt a team sport. When did wrestling stop being about training as hard as you can and toeing the line against any hs kid in your weight class to find out who’s who?
The Delbarton kids might have been more naturally talented than their public school brethren, but chances are they’ve put much more into the sport so the public kid can’t compete. Used to be the “harder I work the luckier I get” was in every wrestling room”.
I apologize maybe I’m just old and out of touch.
