Those following football recruiting this past year may be disappointed. After watching first-year basketball coach Mark Gottfried bring in one of the best recruiting classes in the nation, football coach Tom O’Brien’s bunch seems to lack the punch for a fan base that constantly craves instant success. Although O’Brien is confident in his team’s current situation, there are fans who are worried.
Since O’Brien’s arrival at N.C. State, he has focused on developing players to become better, instead of signing a lot of top-ranked recruits. However, this approach fails to connect with some Wolfpack fans.
“While I do feel like T.O.B’s ‘Three Star Nation’ approach is effective at what it’s supposed to do, I never understood why he never thought he could apply the same methods to higher-ranked recruits,” Rickey Smith, a junior in human biology, said. “If one has a stronger base set of abilities to improve upon, then the end product will be much a team with 15, one player can make more of a difference on a basketball team than on a football team, which changes the span data-scayt_word=”dynamic.”” data-scaytid=”16″dynamic.”/span/p
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“Target them and recruit them better, especially the in-state 4 and 5-star recruits,” span data-scayt_word=”Hamby” data-scaytid=”21″Hamby/span said. “Focus on the in-state span data-scayt_word=”recruits.”” data-scaytid=”22″>recruits.”
Smith chose to offer an opposing view.
“We have to recruit in ‘football’ states,” Smith said. “Local recruits are good, but N.C. just does not have the type of athletic system for football for creating excellent recruits.
“For example, the idea of spring football for high school players would seem extreme here in N.C., but it’s commonplace in places such as Florida and championship.”
Fans eager for the football season to begin can get an early taste at the Kay-Yow Spring game, which will take place Saturday at 3.30 p.m. at Carter-Finley Stadium.
