How Auburn football got out of ‘dreamland,’ had better portal results in spring window

AUBURN — Auburn football coach Hugh Freeze is always going to want to build his roster through traditional recruiting.

That’s how he’s find his success in the past, convincing high schoolers to join him — whether it be at Arkansas State, Ole Miss or Liberty — and help his teams win games. In his 10 seasons coaching at the Division I level before he arrived at Auburn, Freeze pulled in a recruiting class tabbed by the 247Sports Composite as a top-100 haul on seven occasions, a top-50 unit in five instances and a top-20 group four times.

Freeze was inside the top 10 twice while at Ole Miss in 2013 (8) and 2016 (5).

But the game has changed. The portal exists, and talking to transfers is a whole other type of recruiting.

“Idealistically, I’d love to just sign a bunch of high school kids and build great relationships with them and never lose them,” Freeze said in December during the first portal window of the offseason. “That may be in dreamland with the way the climate is of college football today. But that sure would be nice to do that.”

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The Tigers landed nine transfers in the first portal window ahead of spring practice. Some of those additions, such as receiver Robert Lewis, offensive tackle Percy Lewis and safety Jerrin Thompson, are poised to start come Auburn’s season opener in August.

But the winter window came with some misses for the Tigers. They weren’t always able to get some transfer targets in for visits: “You’ve got to try to prove to them, initially on a phone call, that they should look at Auburn,” Freeze said of recruiting the portal. “We’ve done OK with that. But we’ve had many visits set, and they never even get to campus….

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/auburn-football-got-dreamland-had-091733500.html

Author : The Montgomery Advertiser

Publish date : 2024-05-21 09:17:33

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