First-year coach Charlie Strong had a tough task this winter. The replacement for the fired Steve Kragthorpe had just a couple of months to lock up a recruiting class badly needed to build the talent level on campus, especially since Kragthorpe's heavy reliance on junior college players left the cupboard relatively bereft of underclassmen.

So far, so good.

The consensus among the recruiting gurus was that the commits Strong inherited added up to a class that would have been ranked somewhere in the 70s, not surprising considering the team's struggles in recent years and the season-long speculation concerning Kragthorpe's job security. But ultimately, the class he brought to campus was good enough to be rated at No. ...More