UCLA Bruins’ head coach Jim Mora reacts during a game against Arizona at Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena on Saturday, October 01, 2016. (Photo by Ed Crisostomo, Orange County Register/SCNG)
UCLA head coach Jim Mora said the team’s poor results this season did not affect the response from recruits, but the Bruins have a lot of ground to make up for its 2017 class.
UCLA’s 2017 recruiting class ranks 47th in the country according to Scout.com and ninth in the Pac-12. Its nine commits are the second fewest in the conference (only behind Stanford’s eight).
There’s still about six weeks left until National Signing Day (on Feb. 1), so the Bruins have time for a late push, but they’re well behind the pace set during Mora’s tenure.
Below is a look at how the five previous recruiting classes have come together under Mora. Each class is broken down to show when recruits committed and for reference, the graph also shows each group’s Scout.com national ranking. The striped portion on the 2017 class shows how many recruits the Bruins are on pace to end up with, based on how many commits UCLA had by this time in previous years under Mora.
A late push is uncommon for the Bruins under Mora. The only time UCLA has grabbed more commits after Jan. 1 than before was Mora’s first recruiting class, which he took over in December 2011. The head coach has pulled in 57.3 percent of his recruits before January in his five recruiting classes, but excluding the first class, that figure jumps to 61.1 percent. UCLA is on pace for only 16 recruits in this year’s class, which would be the smallest group in the Mora era.
Interestingly in this very small sample size, it seems that there could be a correlation between the number of early commits and the perceived strength of the class. UCLA’s three highest rated classes (according to Scout.com) each had more than 61 percent of their recruits commit early:
- 2015 – 63.2 percent committed before the new year, No. 9 Scout.com ranking
- 2014 – 62.1 percent, No. 8
- 2013 – 61.5 percent, No. 3
In 2014, only 57.9 percent of the players committed before the new year and the class was ranked 20th in the country by Scout. I’m viewing the 2012 class as an outlier because Mora took over halfway through. Again, four recruiting classes is a tiny sample size.
While the Bruins have big recruits in five-star defensive end Jaelan Phillips and four-star defensive tackle Greg Rogers, they’ve missed out on other big names like four-star receiver Tarik Black (who chose Michigan) and one of the top inside linebackers in the country Anthony Hines III (who chose Texas A&M).
Here’s UCLA commit list so far, rankings according to Scout:
- DE Jaelan Phillips – 5-star
- DT Greg Rogers – 4-star
- DE Cassius Peat – 3-star (JuCo)
- OL Kanan Ray – 3-star
- OL Jaxson Kirkland – 3-star
- DB Jaylan Shaw – 3-star
- DB Quentin Lake – 3-star
- TE Jimmy Jaggers – 4-star
- QB Austin Burton – 3-star