The biggest day in college football recruiting is right around the corner and after a tremendous amount of turnover, Syracuse’s Class of 2016 is finally taking shape. To say that Dino Babers and his staff have had a busy week would be an understatement. In the last ten days, Syracuse has added 11, yes 11, players to its class of 2016.
As of today, Syracuse has 21 players who have verbally committed for next season.. Babers and Co. had a 24-hour stretch where he accepted 7 verbal commitments. Of course, it wasn’t all positive for DIno. This surge of commitments came after a stretch of eight decommitts. However, it has to be said, that Dino has done a tremendous job in a very short amount of time.
Less than two weeks ago, Syracuse had the 15th ranked recruiting class in the ACC, according to 247 sports. Today, Syracuse has leap-frogged three teams and now has the 12th ranked class in the ACC. This span has also seen the Orange jump over 20 spots in the national rankings to 56.
All of this means very little without comparison. So, let’s compare this class, in terms of ranking, to the Scott Shafer’s first season at the helm, 2013. Syracuse’s 2013 class had 22 commits, one more than this year’s class so far, and ranked 76th in the nation and 12th in the ACC. Shafer’s 2014 was significantly stronger but it is unfair to compare this class to then because Shafer had a full recruiting cycle. In 2013, like Babers this year, Shafer did not.
The point is, Dino Babers has, so far, done a very similiar job to what Scott Shafer did in his first, abridged, recruiting cycle.
It is also important to remember that Scott Shafer was a decent recruiter. Fans became frustrated with him more for his inability to manage a game and get the most out of the players that he worked to so hard to bring in.
Nothing is official until the players put pen to paper next week, and Syracuse can still add more players, but Babers’ first class is finally taking shape and, at the very least, he has met the precedent set by Scott Shafer.
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