joshvanklomp said:
I'm starting to think there's no way James redshirts, and even has a possibility of starting. [tweet]https://twitter.com/ryanholmgren/status/621817245703008256[/tweet]
It will be very exciting to watch him develop.
If you look at generic recruiting rankings (Rivals, 247, etc.), James would just appear to be a solid recruit, somewhat behind Conway. However, that highlights the weakness of those types of rankings as any deeper look into James as a recruit would have revealed that he was not only the top recruit in our class but one of the more accomplished recruits we have landed in a very long time.
As a senior, he was SIAA (Florida private school league) POY over a host of high major prospects including arguably the top prospect in the 2016 class. Prior to that, he had played in a less recognized program/league. He saw his recruitment blow up over the summer last year with interest being generated from high major schools (ultimately chose UW over Mississippi State). However, since he was an under the radar recruit when they first started putting class rankings together (summer before Jr. year of HS and through the Jr year of HS) he was not really recognized as such by those rankings.
One of the things that Shyatt and his staff have done very well is identify up and coming prospects and get involved in their recruitment. If they are a Top 100/150 type player before their Jr. year we probably aren't getting involved (possible exception for a local kid like Hunter Thompson), however Shyatt's staff has really identified a high number of guys that were not at that recruitment level early but that ended up as very high level recruits (Harrell, Stone, James, Blair, etc.). Some of the 2016 (Peters, Bassett, Childs, Diallo, Mueller) and 2017 (Thompson, Avea, etc.) prospects may end up following similar paths.
We haven't landed very many of those guys (other than James), but I think it speaks well to the staff's ability to evaluate talent.
