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If Michigan keeps this up, their DLine might average 5'10" and 175lbs in a few years.

These were the only kids that could be considered, in someway shape or form, "misses":

Adrian Coxson
Dominique Easley
Sharrif Floyd
Marcus Lattimore
Michael Thornton
Keenan Allen

1) Coxson was pushed away by the staff. There are a ton of rumors about why this happened, but some sort of rift developed between the two parties. Even until the end, if Coxson had a "committable" offer from PSU - he would have signed it in a heartbeat.

He is also a kid whose stock dropped quite a bit since he committed. He showed very poorly in camps this winter, and had very few fans amongst his peers at those camps.

2) Dominique Easley was always set on Florida. Penn State was a Plan B option, and the preferred choice of his parents. When he saw something flashier (i.e. Oregon), he jumped at the chance. And when his dream offer came back on the table, he was gone. I'm not sure that there was too much the staff could do in this situation. Of course, Easley appears to be the biggest loss of this recruiting class.

3) Sharrif Floyd appears to be as gullible a recruit as any I've seen in recent years. His official reasoning for going to UF was that he wanted to get away from the North. Imo, he bought what Urban was selling hook, line, and sinker.

4) Marcus Lattimore was ours. At one point in time, he was committed to Penn State. Royster's return had little, if anything to do with his de-committing. It was all about family, friends, and the local community telling him to stay home.

5) Michael Thornton is pretty simple. His parents never saw State College, and his parents never met JoePa. If Joe had hit the road, and if Joe was more active overall in recruiting, Thornton would have been ours. When the head guy is pretty foreign to the recruit and his parents, the chances of landing the kid are bordering on none.

6) Penn State stopped recruiting Keenan Allen a long time ago. The problems with him calling up Penn State was a) the limited time frame, b) the staff had only one definite available scholarship, c) the domino effect to our young QBs if his brother were brought in, and d) the staff doesn't like to have things dictated to them. It should tell everyone something that only Cal and Penn State were willing to try to make this thing work for them. In the end, it appears that Penn State was unwilling to make it happen... thus, Keenan's decision was made for him.

........................

What does suck is that at different points in time, we had 3 of those 6 verbally committed to Penn State. We would have had a much better shot at keeping Lattimore if Joe was more involved in the process, and we would have had a great shot at landing Thornton as well.

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