So, I logged on during my lunch break to see how things shook out today and found us all in the throes of what appeared to be an unmitigated disaster. Moorhead's as good as fired, the state's high school players have turned against MSU as an institution, fire and brimstone coming down from the skies, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together . . . mass hysteria.
Well, balls. So I go over to 24/7 to see what the hell happened. Confusion sets in. I don't follow this stuff very closely and I don't mean to make light of whatever legitimate failures the staff had, but don't the "rankings," such as they are, reflect at least some degree of success? I mean, here are MSU's 24/7's composite rankings for the past decade:
2009 - 18th
2010 - 30th
2011 - 41st
2012 - 22nd
2013 - 24th
2014 - 36th
2015 - 18th
2016 - 28th
2017 - 24th
2018 - 27th
2019 - 23rd
So by the composite ranking, this year's the 4th highest in the past 11 years.
But if you look past that composite and go to what appears to be the metric of the quality of the individual players -- i.e. our players' average rating -- this is actually the best class we've had in those 11 years. As of 1:45 p.m. (eastern), the average rating of a player in our class is 88.64. That's the highest player average we've had in the past 11 years. Until now, we'd never had that number hit above 87.69, and that was in 2015, the year after Dak and Co. took the world by storm. In fact, only three times in Mullen's tenure did we even hit the 87 mark. Here are the numbers and their corresponding national rank:
2009 - 86.96 (19th)
2010 - 84.41 (46th)
2011 - 83.23 (44th)
2012 - 85.99 (29th)
2013 - 86.22 (24th)
2014 - 84.84 (33rd)
2015 - 87.69 (20th)
2016 - 87.08 (24th)
2017 - 86.11 (27th)
2018 - 87.20 (26th)
2019 - 88.64 (19th)
Given that 89/90 is the cuttoff where composite 4-star rankings begin and that having a roster with more 4+ star dudes than 3-star dudes is apparently necessary to get us where we want to go, getting an 88.64 average seems to be an okay first step. It's not good enough, obviously, but I'm thinking it's not quite yet the end of times. I think . . . .
TL;DR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sbFhOeqTzY