Three & Out: Dead period ends, in-staters feeling love, B1G early returns

This is HuskerOnline.com’s feature in which recruiting analysts Mike Matya and Bryan Munson give their weekly takes on topical issues concerning Nebraska football, baseball and recruiting.

Today in our next installment of “Three and Out” we hit on the NCAA dead period ends, in-state recruits feeling the love, and Big Ten 2023 recruiting early returns.

The NCAA Dead Period ended yesterday, and a Quiet Period commenced which will run from March 1 through April 14. This means college coaches can host high school recruits on campus for spring practices and spring games.

These next several weeks will be crucial for Nebraska to build on the momentum they have established with this 2023 class.

NU is scheduled to have its third Junior Day of the 2022 calendar year on Saturday, which will give them an opportunity to interact with yet another group of unofficial visitors in Lincoln as they continue to lay the groundwork for this new recruiting cycle.

The Husker coaches will not be able to be on the road yet to check in on prospects at their respective schools. That will have to wait until the April 15 through May 31 Evaluation Period.

The Red-White game will take place on April 9, so the Cornhusker staff should be ready to hit the ground running as soon as the spring game wraps up. But in the interim of these next six weeks, a lot of recruiting activity should be occurring on campus.

As has been discussed, the Cornhusker program has a new Senior Director of Player Personnel & Recruiting with a return of Vince Guinta to Lincoln. He is a master organizer, he knows the recruiting game inside and out, and he is the consummate “people person”. This is when you should see his impact on Nebraska’s recruiting operation start to take effect.

NU has also added two proven ace recruiters to their coaching staff in Mickey Joseph and Bill Busch, and they will continue their tireless recruiting work they started after their respective hires.

Nebraska fans should rightfully have high expectations for this reworked Husker staff when it comes to the Class of 2023 and beyond.

Over the past five years, Coach Scott Frost has learned what will work and not work for Nebraska in this modern age of recruiting. He has made adjustments in his support and coaching staffs to increase the efficiency and efficacy of recruiting to Lincoln.

The changes have already been noticeable since the 2021 season ended, but these next several months are when we should really start to see the payoffs.

HOL will have full coverage of Saturday’s Junior Day, as well as any other visitors for spring practices and the Red-White game, so keep checking in with us.

– Mike Matya

The in-state recruits in 2022 were very good. The top five ended up signing with schools such as Oregon, Auburn, Oklahoma, Wyoming and Nebraska. Nebraska offered all five. A year ago, Nebraska lost four of the top five.

It’s a tough story to read over and over again — the state’s top in-state players deciding to leave. There is clearly a change in how the Nebraska staff is treating in-state players and the early results show it.

I shared with the board earlier this week that Maverick Noonan was going to attend Nebraska’s junior day this coming weekend. This will close out Nebraska bringing in the top five players in the state by the first weekend in March.

The Huskers have offered all five of the top players on the list and have commitments from three (Gunnar Gottula, Ben Brahmer and Sam Sledge). Noonan and Malachi Coleman remain uncommitted, but each of them has absolutely been feeling the love from Nebraska.

I have zero to do with the national or the state rankings, but if I would have pulled together the state ranking with the Rivals ratings aside, Coleman would remain at No. 1 and Noonan would have been No. 2.

The rankings are supposed to be about their ability and their potential. It’s tough, however, to separate the needs for Nebraska from the list and that influences things for me.

It’s difficult for me to think about Coleman staying at wide receiver. I think he will develop in college and put on enough size and weight to end up at another position. More than likely outside linebacker and potentially big enough to play defensive end.

Noonan is already an outside linebacker recruit for Nebraska. It’s a critical position for the Huskers to get a couple of serious threats off the edge in the 2023 class and both could come from in-state.

Looking past the 2023 class, we have already seen the Nebraska staff checking up on both Dae’Vonn Hall and Caleb Benning in January. Both Hall and Benning have been to junior day events in Lincoln and have also seen noticeable changes in the attention the current staff at Nebraska is giving to them.

As stated in chat on Tuesday, I believe Nebraska will end up gaining commitments from both Coleman and Noonan. It’s going to take some time to get to the final decision for both and fans are going to have to sweat out some visits from both to other schools.

It’s going to happen, though. I can feel the aching in my bones. Nebraska will pull off a clean sweep of the top five players in the state for the 2023 class.

– Bryan Munson

After having a mini-rally when last season ended, the revamped and revitalized Husker staff was able to sign a few key prospects and finish at No. 38 in the Rivals national rankings.

That meant a 9th place finish in the conference for NU, but the Huskers also had the 2nd-best transfer portal class last cycle.

Looking at this next recruiting cycle, Nebraska is sitting at No. 14 in the country with early commits to the 2023 class. But that is only good for 6th place in the conference since five other Big Ten schools are currently ranked in the top 11 nationally.

Having a potential top 20 class is more in line with where NU has finished since Scott Frost took over as the Huskers’ head coach, but there’s much work yet to be done to be able to talk about that type of recruiting haul.

The transfer portal will also be a major factor in how many combined high school and junior college recruits the Big Red signs in December and the first Wednesday of February 2023.

The table below table gives the early lay of the land for the Big Ten schools nationally and against their conference brethren.

Illinois is the only Big Ten program without a current verbal pledge to their Class of 2023. No B1G team has acquired any five-star commits yet.

Six B1G teams, including Nebraska, have already landed a quarterback commit for this class.

Ohio State and Penn State are the only two conference members who have already secured a Rivals100 pledge. They each also have two Rivals250 commits, as do both Michigan and Michigan State. Purdue and Indiana have one R250 verbal pledge apiece.

Nebraska is in a four-way tie for the third most in verbal commitments at this early point in the cycle, but the Cornhuskers have the least amount of four-star pledges.

Saturday, Mar. 5, will be Nebraska’s third Junior Day of this calendar year and, just as the first two did, it will give us a decent gauge of the caliber of recruit NU will be pursuing this cycle.

– Mike Matya