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Welcome to Buckeye Talk. It is another Buckeye football futures. I'm Nathan Baird. Steve Means. We are from Cleveland.com. As you already know, I'm sure. And we're here to talk a little bit of how state football recruiting the Lamarice today. This episode will sort of carry you through the weekend. We're going to get back into our usual routine.

Starting Monday. We're going to be changes of things up. I don't know if Doug's already talked about this on the pod, but not all three of us every day of the week now. We're going to be shifting some things around as we get into the offseason. Give us an opportunity to do some other work.

But I think Doug and I are supposed to be back Monday. We'll be talking about kind of a Monday madness sort of approach to Mondays again. Well, what are the odds? So that'll kick us off each week. And then Stephen are going to pretty regularly drop these recruiting episodes throughout the offseason.

And obviously we're in an interesting period right now. A lot of coaches out on the trail. A lot of offers going out. If you follow that sort of thing on Twitter. And we're going to get to that at the end of this episode. We're going to talk a little bit about the latest commitment will Smith Jr. And who the next commitment might be.

We're going to talk a little bit about Luke Montgomery, the four star top 100 lineman from Finley, who we had a big story about this week at Cleveland.com. The encourage you all to check out. And we're going to kind of get into some of the details there in the dynamics around that and how Michigan's involved, how Clinton's evolved and some things are going on.

We want to start with another series that we've been running that Stephen's been working on on the site. Cleveland.com slash OSU or slash Buckeye talk should take you there.

And it's looking into sort of the backgrounds and what to expect from each of the incoming Ohio State assistant coaches and a little bit about what they've done as recruiters and what their role might look like going forward and and how that's going to work. And Stephen, maybe just to start off with.

As you sort of looked into the backgrounds, these guys, what anything that stood out that impressed you in some way, anything that caught your eye as something that somebody has done on the recruiting trail that should translate well to Ohio State.

At face value, no, to just keep it plain and simple without the added context of, you know, their backgrounds and where they come from and whatnot. And so not at face value.

The most impressive recruit of the bunch is Perry, Eliano and that 2022 recruiting class for Cincinnati where he went down the Phoenix City, Alabama, to central high school, which is now the same high school that AJ Harris is at.

So as you know, there's some relationships there. He wouldn't pull the four star kid by the name of JQ Hardaway, which is that's the highest rated guy he's ever brought in at any school he's been to along the way. And why did that happen.

Saw Scardner and Kobe Bryant. I mean, when you just, when you just develop two guys who are ones all American in the other ones, Jim Thorpe award winner.

You know, it kind of, you know, ups your value a little bit on the recruiting trail. So at face value, no, but when you start adding the context for some of these guys, starting with maybe a Tim Walden Tim Walden hasn't been at the college level for a decade.

So of course, there's no recruiting, you know, background that he has. That's very recent that would make anybody look at his his pro, his resume and go, I don't know. Oh, I know this is going to work. You probably a little bit hesitant until you realize that he spent four games and a training camp with Jalen Ramsey, who just gave a very raving review on his way out of the door of Jacksonville back in 2019, I believe, where he had a lot of great things to say for him.

That's a stamp of approval there. Perry Aliano seems like a guy who's ready to take that next step as an assistant coach and kind of Jim knows has never really been much of a recruiter, but that's not why they brought him here.

And while he's out on the recruiting trail right now offering guys that shouldn't be the expectation with him.

And you look at a Justin Fry. It might be the same thing as a Perry Aliano, not to that extreme, but the idea of what happens once he gets the resources of an Ohio State football program. What kind of recruiting can he do there?

Let's get into some of these guys because I want to make sure I know exactly what you're saying with some of these guys. And in the piece that you wrote for Cleveland.com, you said that Jim knows recruiting has been pedestrian at best.

I know that the star ratings for the guys that he's recruited have not been especially high. That's true of every class at Oklahoma State and Duke before him. You don't, Duke doesn't get five star even four star recruits really ever probably.

So why is he pedestrian recruiter?

I mean, he's never had anybody who's higher than a forced a three star recruit and the list of guys that he has been the primary for. It's not a long list at all.

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