Krootin': Mincy, etc.

w00t! Commitment No. 8, come on down:

Auburn grabbed its eighth commitment for 2010 when Decatur, Ga., cornerback Jonathan Mincy announced his intention to play for the Tigers late Monday night ...

The 5-foot-10, 175-pound cornerback from Southwest Dekalb High is ranked as a three-star recruit by both Rivals and Scout. Rivals has him as the 25th ranked cornerback nationally. Scout ranks him 40th.

Mincy follows in the footsteps of virtually all of Auburn's other commitments: yeah, he's a three-star, but he's a three-star well on the high end of the three-star scale. Both Rivals and Scout report offers from LSU, Miami, and North Carolina, and Rivals adds on Michigan and Georgia Tech offers as well. However seriously you think these various teams might have been pursuing Mincy, you don't get that kind of attention by, well, not being good at the sport of football.

ESPN gives Mincy a better-than-average-but-not-stupendous 78, which I guess could be better. But the main thing is this: six of Auburn's eight commitments have gotten a 78 or better (with one of the two others one of the nation's best kickers). Whatever you think of ESPN's evaluative skills, this is a much, much better ratio than last year's dead-even 50 percent at 78 or better. In short: the talk about this staff improving Auburn's recruiting hasn't just been hype, and Mincy's just the latest example.

Highlights!



Hooray! Elsewhere, the news hasn't been quite as good, but nothing earth-shatteringly bad, either.

C'est la vie. Last time on "Krootin'," I wrote that if--if! if! if!--Michael Dyer didn't take any more visits (as one report had quoted him as saying), it would be a safe bet to expect him to come to the Plains. Not surprisingly in the least for a player of his caliber, either he changed his mind or he never said it or something along those lines, because since he's been talking about taking visits to LSU and Notre Dame and how the Irish (and Oklahoma) are apparently in the mix. From where I sit: hey, that's fine. (And totally expected: a smart kid like Dyer knows there's not really any reason for him to make a decision right away, a fact I should have emphasized more last time out.) Asking for anything more than a solid lead--which Auburn still holds with Dyer, even according to the Notre Dame ESPN affiliate--with a player like Dyer (especially at a program that's struggled as much of late as Auburn has) is getting greedy. Greedy is fun while the waiting is the hardest part, and all that, but that's how it goes. The news here will need to be much worse before the glass gets half-empty.

Bleah. Auburn has to have offensive linemen in this class. Good ones. Has to. It's the one legitimate caveat about the class so far, and so it's awful hard not to wince when the biggest line target on Auburn's board looks at two friends/teammates going to South Carolina and says ...

“It has impacted me a lot,” he said. “I like playing with both of them.”

Fortunately, it hasn't impacted Mack so much that Auburn's not still right there, as this quote from the same article demonstrates:

“I’ve liked every school that I have visited so far,” Mack said. “All have their own little different way. At South Carolina, I like coach Wolford. At Auburn, I feel like I’m at home. (Clemson) Coach (Chris) Rumph is from down here and he can relate to what I’m going through. At Georgia Tech, I like the atmosphere. So, right now, I’m (in St. Matthews) and that is basically it.”

Your guess is as good as mine whether "home" is more or less important than the factors he mentions elsewhere, but I also think it's fair to assume that Auburn doesn't have a lead here and that there's still a lot more work left to do--both with Mack and on the offensive line in general.

Yeah, you can give that up now. So much for the idea that Rivals is the pro-Tide service and Scout the more Auburn-friendly gurus: Scout's preliminary Alabama top 50 rates Jawara White and Auburn's best in-state commitment to-date at No. 10. The top eight consists entirely of Tide and Florida commits and/or leans, with LaDarius Owens at No. 9 the only other likely Auburn commitment in the top 10. Rivals' list should be a little kinder--they're much higher on Jeremy Richardson, as we know, and supposedly Owens is going to make a big move with them. Nonetheless it remains a little bit aggravating to see Auburn shut out of the state's best consensus talents again. No, it won't matter much if Auburn can keep pulling solid out-of-state talents like Mincy, and certainly Rome wasn't built in a day--nabbing Richardson, White, and (fingers crossed) Owens would make it a big improvement on last year. But there's still some obvious room for improvement.

Etc. As mentioned briefly yesterday, Scout has seen fit to rank Cody Parkey the No. 2 kicker in the nation and give him a fourth star, making him Auburn's only four-star commitment-to-date at that service ... four-star Auburn wideout target Antonio Goodwin will play in the ESPN All-American game. He apparently named Auburn his leader not too long ago and ESPN guru J.C. Shurbutt says "the Tigers are in good shape at the moment" ... at that same Insider link, Marcus Lattimore discussed trips to Clemson and Georgia without saying anything overly complimentary of either one. Nothing really new here: Auburn's in his top eight, and he says he'll cut it down by the end of July.