Found this table in this article: http://www.aseaofblue.com/2010/8/14/1622891/kentucky-basketball-foes-may-hate

And thought it was pretty interesting...

I was unable to locate after a reasonable Google search a historical database of recruiting class rankings by school, but I was able to locate RSCI Hoops, which gives us the consensus class rankings since 1998.  Statsheet has further cut these statistics, and here is the best meaningful comparison I could come up with:

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After the flurry of commitment activity that included adding OH PG Travis Trice and Izzo's (and Matt Painter's) big fish IN SF Branden Dawson, Michigan State's 2011 recruiting class appears to be full and concluded.  Because speculation immediately began about 2012 target Gary Harris, I started to consider if it was as obvious as it seemed that Izzo was done with 2011 players and that this mystery spot would only be for 2012.  Could there be plans to still add a big man to the perimeter dominant 2011 class?  The last piece of evidence on the negative came in the form of recent reports that Chicago De La Salle's Mike Shaw had begun scheduling in-home visits and was leaving out Michigan State.  For months, MSU was considered to be one of the front-runners for his services and, aside from apparently out-of-state bound Amir Williiams, Shaw was the highest regarded big man on the MSU radar.  With no post players arriving next season, finding room for the Chicago post threat could have made sense as insurance for an already loaded MSU roster.  If Izzo was discovering a way to work scholarship magic for 2011, Mike Shaw would be a principle beneficiary but it doesn't look like that's in the works. Barring the unforeseen, consider 2011 done.

In other "where-are-they-now" notes, the 2011 Hotlist is mostly full of committed players including Percy Gibson (Dayton), LaDontae Henton (Dayton), and most recently Tommie McCune (W. Va) and Jalen Reynolds (Xavier).  Some of those who haven't committed are headed to prep schools presumably to get academics in order.  As Con-T already discussed in his excellent FanShot, this can be a messy business. If you want insight into the heated world of individuals surrounding an elite prospect, check out the statements from Dru Joyce, former coach of Jakarr Sampson, upon the Sampson family's decision to transfer him to Brewster Academy in New Hampshire.  In assigning blame for losing his star player, Joyce singled out Xavier as a school who "has made enemies here."  Intense.  In a similar note, Jeremiah Davis is also headed to prep school without either of his best offers of Michigan State and Indiana still available.  This is a rather significant fall for a player who was once thought to be able to write his ticket to two of the Big Ten's most storied programs.  Paul Honigford has remained lightly recruited and looks to eventually be MAC bound with offers from Toledo and Ohio (O! H! I! O!).   Trey McDonald carries some solid offers and should make a decision before the early signing period with Michigan still in the mix.  Patrick Lucas-Perry, once Coach Izzo's primary point guard target for 2011, has an offer from Oakland to join his recently transferred brother or could go academic big-time and play for Tommy Amaker at Harvard.  I wonder if UM is still an option?

I've included this as a FanPost in the right margin in case anyone would like to add some recruiting links as they come up.  However, I expect it to be pretty quiet (if not silent) until speculation picks up about who might be coming to this year's Midnight Madness in October.

Creepiness abounds in the recruitment of one-time MSU target JaKarr Sampson, who will be transferring to Brewster Academy prep school in New Hampshire. His now openly acknowledged academic problems were cited by his mother as the reason for the transfer, but his high school coach, Dru Joyce II, has lashed out at the colleges recruiting Sampson, specifically Xavier, for luring him away from Akron Saint Vincent-Saint Mary's to have more control: "I truly believe he still wants to be here, but they just tore him away from us." Ugh. The best I can say is that I didn't see Michigan State or Tom Izzo mentioned in any of the articles I found. Also no word on whether Sampson is reclassifying to 2012, as had originally been rumored.

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Scout and ESPN have reported that Clark has verbaled(ized?) to MSU.  This is a huge get for the spartans. 

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After a gopher fan responded on LVS's post ranking likelihood of wins over this years schedule that a Minnesota win over MSU would not be an upset I got to thinking. What do you expect when you see the teams listed on a given year's schedule? I understand of course that times change (for example Wisconsin in 1985 is a lot different than UW in 1998).

My personal expectations follow the jump. Please respond with yours.

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This is a little something for those of you who are fans of "The Office."  After the announcement about the NCAA allegations at UM, some friends and I were joking that the situation in Ann Arbor was like the "Product Recall" episode of "The Office" (where the obscene watermark ends up on a bunch of paper that gets shipped out, then Michael goes into full panic mode trying to manage the situation).  Taking it a step further, we got the transcript for that episode from officequotes.net (great time-wasting site, by the way) and modified it to fit the cast of characters at UM and the storyline of the allegations.

The full modified transcript is after the jump - enjoy.

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I, for one, am incensed at the news coming out of Ann Arbor that the Michigan/Ohio State is going to be moved from the last Saturday of the regular season and be a cross-divisional game. I think it's a betrayal of what the Big Ten stands for (and I'm an MSU fan). I wrote a lengthy analysis of why I think this is a bad idea, a discussion of what the league should do, and what we as fans can do about it for another blog; in the interests of keeping the conversation in one place instead of spread across 2 sets of comment sections, I'll post a link to it. http://www.theothersideofspartansports.com/2010/08/big-ten-divisions-mistake-big-ten.html

Hope to see you there.

According to the FREEP, we've picked up a commitment from one of our targets Jack Allen - a lineman out of Illinois also coveted by UW and Iowa. I'm glad that we are getting recruits that the other conference powers are after. No more, "he picked MSU over Indiana, Kent State and Eastern Michigan." He's an interior lineman, potentially a center. I don't have any video on him, but I'm sure before it's all said and done, someone will have posted something of him.

GO GREEN!

Here's the link:

FREEP

According to the Detroit News the South Carolina-MSU game is part of the Worldwide Leader's Hoops Marathon on November 16, 2010.  The game will be on the Mother Ship and tip off at 10:00 PM EST.  Only three months to wait.
South Carolina was a mid-pack SEC  team last year and looks like interesting filler on the 2010-2011 schedule, that is to say a BCS conference team over whom a victory will look better than it actually is to the general public.

Bumped. Happy Monday everyone! - Pete

Drew Cannon recently published an interesting article on the Basketball Prospectus site that has provoked some discussion about positions on the basketball court and the limitations of traditional thinking. Eamonn Brennan looked at some of the implications of Cannon's article and other responses have come from Rob Mahoney and Tom Ziller. And, over at UM Hoops, Dylan has tweaked Cannon's system a bit and used it as a lens through which to view the Michigan lineup and its possible combinations for the upcoming season. None of this is brand new, of course: NBA types have been looking at this kind of thing for several years now. (See this piece by Tim McSweeney from 2006, for example.) But not a lot has been done to move this discussion to the college game to see what it might illuminate. Cannon and Brennan have both pointed out how an open-minded consideration of skills that don't fit the traditional positional mold could give a coach an edge in finding talent, especially at the mid-major level, if such "tweeners" have slipped through the cracks. My goal is somewhat more limited. I'm going to try to refine things a little further with some tweaks of my own and then use the result to take a look at the Michigan State team and its possible areas of concern, as well as what floor combinations we might expect or want to see for the Spartans.*

*My original intent was to look at roles on some of the future MSU teams, based on the recruits Izzo has brought in and questions about who's going to play where. I ended up leaving all of that out, but may do a second post in the future. It would also be intriguing to do team vs. team matchups in the Big Ten.

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