By the end of the day, Texas Tech, Joey McGuire, and the coaching staff finished with 18 commitments, adding 3 additional commitments yesterday. Texas Tech would finish 7th in the Big 12 Rivals and 24/7 Sports recruiting rankings and from a national perspective, Texas Tech was 39th and 40th overall. From a very 10,000 foot view perspective to finish anywhere near the 40th best class is amazing.

From a Big 12 perspective, this is how things finished last night.

I decided to include the points and not just how the team finished. I also know that this isn’t a finshed product, but generally speaking, there’s not a ton of difference between 5th and 6th place in those Rivals rankings and a larger drop-off after Texas Tech. It would definitely be fair to say that Texas Tech finished in the top half and I don’t think it is a stretch to say that this would not have happened without Joey McGuire at the helm. My guess is that Matt Wells would have preached the idea of transfers and that he would be shopping in that market more than high school players.

The 24/7 Sports numbers are even closer I think, except for Texas and Oklahoma, but the grouping of Oklahoma State, Iowa State, West Virginia, Baylor, and Texas Tech, you can probably safely say that they are in the same universe.

The three additional commits were three that were essentially predicted yesterday. I’ll be working on player profiles in the coming days, but here’s a quick snap-shot.

• DB Landon Hullaby (6-0/195): Hullaby is a top 50 player in Texas, a 3-star safety with a good offer list including Arizona, Arizona State, Arkansas, Auburn, Baylor, California, Colorado, Georgia Tech, Oklahoma State, Kansas, Kansas State, Oregon, Texas, etc.). Hullaby was originally an Oregon commit and then the thought was that he’d flip to Texas, which didn’t happen. Hullaby is a safety all the way that might grow into a linebacker, but he’s got really nice range.
• DT Trevon McAlpine (6-3/280): A 3-star defensive tackle from Alabama, McAlpine also had a ton of offers, including Arkansas, Arizona, State, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Kansas State, Nebraska, TCU, Virginia Tech, and West Virginia to name a few. McAlpine appears to be all defensive tackle and I’m quite happy with that.
• OL Seth Martin (6-3/290): Another 3-star player, an offensive lineman from powerhouse Everman outside of Ft. Worth, only 8 on his offer list, sort of a strange list, including Dartmouth, Furman, North Texas, TCU, Texas State, and UNLV. Martin probably doesn’t have the prototypical size of a modern offensive lineman in that he’s not 6’5″, but he finishes blocks, plays with attitude, and is powerful.

Big picture, McGuire decided early on that the defense and the lines would all be areas of importance. This includes the transfers that were announced the day before, but this is a recruiting class that 13 on the defensive side of the ball with a heavy emphasis on all three major position groups. I actually liked Keith Patterson, but I’ll never forget that he once said that he runs the 3-man front because there were just a lack of defensive linemen when he arrived and that’s just the way that it is. Well, I know that McGuire is going to run a 3-man front most likely, but McGuire increased the defensive numbers immediately, with all 4 defensive linemen being his commits, 3 of the linebackers, and 3 of the defensive backs. During the press conferences, McGuire said that he wanted an additional offensive lineman and he’ll be looking for that for the February signing period.

The key takeaway from me would be that McGuire wanted to get bigger. Across the board he wanted to get bigger and I would have maybe pegged McGuire as a guy that would go for flash, like skill positions, but that’s not the case at all. I sort of love that.

Something that I didn’t notice until this morning, which is that Erik Gray, the offensive lineman from Amarillo, and Gavin Freeman, the athlete from Heritage Hall in Oklahoma did not sign yesterday. Work was pretty crazy for me so I’m not sure why they didn’t.