Looking at the last 5 years (outside of Indiana), the top NC contenders were loaded with these highly ranked recruits. Are the rankings perfect....obviously not but your chances of competing with top notch teams depends a lot on your talent base. Coaching matters but you really can't coach height and speed. As mentioned earlier, the Hoosiers are a true outlier. A team comprised of lower rated star players solidly whipping teams with higher rated athletes is extremely rare! In this case, a coach found a way to get his collection of players to play high level almost entire games. Motivation is also a big factor in performance. However, Indy now is doing everything they can to attract as many highly ranked HS studs as they can get. Why?.... Because stars matter and to repeat as NC champs is going to take talent. For VT, the last time we were truly competitive was when Beamer convinced enough high rated HS talent to become Hokies. Coach Franklin is duplicating (and might just exceed) Beamers success at landing talent. I would much rather load up on 4 star athletes than lower rated 2 and 3 stars. They all need to be coached up but based on what I see, VT will have a much better chance at being above average very soon.