The result is a 22-player signing class that Tuberville said looks different than his first two full recruiting classes, but fits the needs of the team in the immediate future.
The Bearcats, despite losing seven early commits to other schools in the last two months, drew 17 players rated as 3-star recruits by 247Sports.com, and the class ranks seventh in the 12-team American Athletic Conference.
“We try to get it as perfect a process as we possibly can,” Tuberville said in a press conference Wednesday from UC’s Lindner Center. “There is still guesswork, but I’m proud of all the guys in our recruiting process. This is really the first year we’ve been able to utilize the process we use. Sometimes we come up with a lot of names some people don’t hear about. That’s the beauty of it. We want to make sure that we get the right guys that come to the University of Cincinnati for the right reasons — character, attitude, academics, but also to become productive athletes and football players. I think this group shows a wide variety of players across the country.”
Cincinnati signed just one local product, Mason linebacker Ty Sponseller, who Tuberville said brings a physicality that has been lacking on defense.
The Bearcats’ shortage of local signees wasn’t for lack of trying, though. Sometimes kids just want to leave home.
“We do our due diligence, and we offer scholarships (in Cincinnati),” Tuberville said. “They went other places, bottom line. That happens every place. It’s not the fact we don’t recruit. It’s the simple fact we finish second, third, fourth on these kids that want to go somewhere else.”
Recruiting is always a nationwide search anyway, but Tuberville said with some changes in the Bearcats’ process, they were able to go after some recruits they otherwise wouldn’t have in the past. In the past two years, they’ve rebuilt their recruiting office and hired Fairfield native Greg Bruner as director of recruiting in 2014 to analyze film and study recruits.
Among the top grabs this year was linebacker Tyquan Statham, ranked as the No. 43 “athlete” prospect in the country, and former University of Miami (Fla.) commit James Wiggins, who ranks as the 76th-best cornerback in the nation, according to 247Sports.com. They also picked up heavily recruited receiver Jerron Rollins, a Miami, Fla., native who Cincinnati picked up thanks to a last-minute visit over the weekend, and five players come from junior college programs.
“This year, we also took on the battle of saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to throw our name in the hat of every player we think can play here,’ ” Tuberville said, noting Cincinnati uses many of the same selling points as “power five” conference schools, including a chance to play early, train and play in state-of-the-art facilities, get a good education and be on TV almost every week. “I don’t care who is offering them. If it’s the No. 1 team in the country, we’re going to go head-to-head with them. I think we made a lot of progress. Some we got and some we didn’t, but we went after everybody.”
Cincinnati focused attention on skill position players and athletes with quickness and speed who could add depth in areas that were lacking last season (such as the secondary, where they signed six new players) and help on special teams, which Tuberville pointed out as a weakness in 2015.
The Bearcats lose six receivers to graduation and signed seven more. They signed one running back in Gerrid Doaks, a 6-foot, 190-pound “all-around athlete” from Indianapolis.
“We’ve enhanced what we’re doing, and I think we’re getting a much more defined athlete for a position,” Tuberville said. “We’re becoming more position specific, and because of that, it’s going to make us a better football team. Last year was a lineman year, but this year was more of a skill position year. We had to get more athletes to be able to compete like the top teams in the country.”
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