Shaun Conway praise from Helmholdt

as Conway wasn't a "camp guy" before this year, he didn't show up on radars. Now that he's our commit and will be attending camps (and f'g shit up), expect his star rating to take a big leap, but still probably not to 4-star level since he didn't have the trail of recruiting hype early on that elevates his status in the recruitniks' eyes. I see a solid 3-star bordering on 4 if his senior season takes off.

I've never seen the kid play football, but have seen him on the basketball court and he's a freak. I see him being huge in the red zone with his size, hands, and leaping ability. I think he could be a great pick-up.

Michigan offered Conway and Beyer both very early, with many people asking "WHO!?!?". Goes to show you how this staff can evaluate talent, IMO.

With added weight, Conway will be a good one for sure...

Saw that pic of him dangling from the rim in a basketball game. Any chance Conway plays hoops at UM?

Along that line, I'd love to see a Barwisized Conway check Draymond Green in a few years. Not to be violent, but I wouldn't mind it if somehow said person guarding Green made him fall on the floor and bite his lower lip off. That way, he can't do that annoying-as-hell lower lip thing he does after a good play.

I'm very glad to hear that there is some positive news coming from scouts about him. For two reasons, 1 everyone was ragging on the kid because no one had heard of him, 2 because he will be a beast at Michigan.

...convince me that RichRod and staff know more than I do about recruiting high school football players. How do we know that Conway will get a high star rating? I only want four and five star recruits, damn it. And another thing, we should be concentrating on Ohio since that's where all the talent is, well that and Florida and Texas and California and Pennsylvania and South Carolina and recently I heard something about chap-town in Arizona or somesuch. But while we concentrate on all those areas, we can't forget we have to win Michigan recruiting against Little Brother and we have to do it while getting every 4/5 star from the PSL while not forgetting about the rest of Metro Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Grand Rapids, Traverse City and even Ishpeming. Futhermore, we have to establish a beachhead at Glevnille or we will never overtake the Suckeyes. While we're at it, all elite players that can get admitted to Stanford or Duke must come to Michigan, period. And another thing, if someone expresses interest in ND and Michigan, we have to have them or else we're obviously losing the battle.

I am also concerned that some of our previous recruits didn't turn out to be productive starters. Clearly the coaching staff is failing if every recruit doesn't become a solid contributor, nay NFL prospect, wait inevitable NFL 1st/2nd round draft choice by the start of his sophomore year. And all of our elite recruits should be on the field on day one. No redshirting is allowed because it's a sign of program weakness if the the best players are not on the field immediately. I want us to have the youngest average team age because when they stay too long, they just leave us early like Warren and some other guys I can't think of.

I just realized this would have been better if this was done sans caps and punctuation. Damn, I've got to work on my snarky post skilz.

Sounds like a nice pick-up. The more and more I learn about star rankings and scouting services, the more I think people need to put stock in how the coaches evaluate the players. Sure, 5* stud DEs are going to work everywhere, but beyond that I much rather have a 3* that I know will work in my system than a guru-approved 4* who will be a wash.

Does this mean we can stop bitching up a storm after we get a commit from a kid we don't know a lot about? The commitments of Conway, Carvin Johnson, Drew Dileo, Ray Vinopal and Jake Ryan all resulted in people ripping the recruit and our coaching staff like crazy. With many of those guys, once we learned more about them (or once the recruiting services jumped them up the rankings) many of the same posters have said how excited they are to have them in the class.

I'm not saying that we should never question or critique anything our coaching staff does. But don't you think that RR and staff know who they want better than Rivals does? I promise you the former has a lot more at stake in their decisions than the latter.