Penn State was thrown a bit of a curveball on Monday when offensive line commit [autotag]Joshua Miller[/autotag] announced he was flipping his commitment to the Georgia Bulldogs. Penn State’s recruiting efforts to rebuild the offensive line certainly took a bump as a result, and the overall recruiting ranking was slightly bruised. But just how much changed for the Nittany Lions in the Class of 2023 rankings?
According to the updated team rankings calculated by 247Sports, Penn State still has a top-five recruiting class in 2023. But another Big Ten team has slipped ahead of the Nittany Lions. Northwestern now has the highest-ranked class in the Big Ten, moving up to No. 4 to inch just ahead of No. 5 Penn State in the updated rankings.
Ohio State is one spot behind Penn State with the No. 6 recruiting class in 2023 as of Monday night. Georgia, the benefactor of Miller’s commitment flip, owns the No. 9 recruiting class in 2023 at the moment with nine commits on the board.
As previously explained in our look at the Big Ten recruiting rankings at the beginning of June, Northwestern’s high recruiting ranking is influenced more by the number of commits it currently has lined up and not necessarily on the overall ranking of the individual players. Northwestern has 18 commits in the Class of 2023, including two four-star players. Penn State now has 12 commits with one five-star and six four-star players. The 247Sports composite rankings is a cumulative scoring system to a degree, which gives Northwestern a leg up on its Big Ten competition at this point in the recruiting cycle.
The top four recruiting classes in the nation according to 247Sports are Notre Dame (No. 1, 15 commits), Texas Tech (No. 2, 20 commits), Cincinnati (No. 3, 19 commits), and Northwestern (No. 4, 18 commits). For reference, Alabama has the No. 40 recruiting class, two spots behind Rutgers and one behind Illinois. So, odds are, the overall recruiting rankings will look drastically different as we move closer and closer to the early signing period in December.
Penn State is still in very good shape with its current recruiting class efforts, but it does still hurt to lose a solid recruit at a position of need to the reigning national champions.
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