By: Eric Fawcett -- August 22, 2024 For much of the last two decades, high school recruiting class rankings have been a metric watched closely by fans. While people are still interested in their team bringing in quality talent from the high school ranks–it’s now the transfer class rankings that have started to hold more weight. Currently transfer classes aren’t evaluated by as many services as the high school services, but still there are a number of respected industry professionals that evaluate the incoming transfer classes and put them in order to allow us to see who is expected to have the best incoming veterans. Where Transfer Recruiting Services Rank Florida’s Class | GatorCountry.com
It might be fun to look back in March at these expert "predictions." If it's like football, many don't re-evaluate after the high school star ratings so a late-bloomer stays a 3-star or 2-star even though they play like a 4-star or 5-star. I think all of the new kids are solid additions.
We didn't need a huge transfer class, which is a lot of what they're judging. What we got was a solid interior guy who can rebound and defend, a 6'-11" guy who is an athletic freak but unpolished as yet, and a guard with 7,243 starts and who played in a Final Four. Klavzar and the other freshmen are not part of the transfer class. I'm stoked about the newcomers.
My feeling after the season was over was that Florida had an excellent "core" that was more than capable of another tourney run, as-is assuming Richard and Clayton came back and the transfer portal/recruiting was always going to be about filling holes, maybe upgrading a few key spots, and become more versatile most importantly addressing the defense and bulk issues. What we got IMHO was a class that consisted of all B and A grades in accomplishing those goals. Of course you could knock it for taking Martin over a "true point guard" that would have more easily slotted in for 1-for-1 with our loss of Pullin, but given the talent level of Martin its still an A+ addition IMO. It should be remembered that recruiting services evaluate on the total talent rating of the class combined, not how a class fits with the team. So a team starting "at the bottom' like UF did last year basically and UK is doing this year with Pope is gonna have higher rated classes, even if the ceiling of the team is lower, simply because they can add more players and its easier to attract top level talent with basically a totally open roster and salary NIL cap. If you could grade UF's class on filling needs and elevating the ceiling of the program, UF would have a top-10 or top-5 class IMO. Florida went from tourney contender to final four contender with the talent elevation, holes that were filled and versatility of teams they can line up against. They had a solid scoring core, they needed bulk and defense. They got that. A+ class IMO.
I am less concerned since our returning players are better than our returning players last year. I'm just ready for the games.
Need and FIT are more important than rankings IMHO. We got the right pieces we needed, plus more in Urban and a nice LT project in Rioux. Yes it would be good to do a March evaluation, I’m sure we’ll find these “experts” have made more than a few mistakes, as usual.
We lost for this coming season Handlogten, Samuel, Pullin and Kugel, and we added 2 bigs, Martin and a few freshmen. That doesn’t strike me as an upgrade. The key is going to be how much improvement we get out of Condon, Haugh and Aberdeen, and whether we need improve the defense. We had the horses last season to put a good defense on the floor, but it didn’t happen. We better coach em up on defense this season.
upgrade or not, though unlikely, still remains to be seen but we got the pieces we needed AND the the benefit of a lot of really good returning players and core pieces from last year. We had less continuity last year, tons of new guys coming in and learning the system. Clayton, Richards, Haugh and Condon (and to some degree late season, Aberdeen) all key pieces. Kugel grossly underperformed vs expectations so not a huge loss; hopefully all our young guys take a nice Prather-style jump and not a Kugel-style slide. Expecting big sophomore jumps from Hawk, Condor and Chinyelu too
