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03-16-2023, 08:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-17-2023, 04:38 AM by
msqueri.)
Four dimensional analysis on Hoitink:
Services: We should revisit this in a year as March of sophomore year is far too early to have meaningful rankings and indeed the only one Hoitink has is a Rivals 5.6 grade (same grade as Charlie Symonds, Luke Baklenko, Jake Maikkula, Austin Uke, Jack Leyrer, Barrett Miller, Drake Nugent, Drew Dalman, Dylan Powell, Henry Hattis, Nate Herbig, Austin Maihen, Brian Chaffin, David Bright, Kevin Reihner, Brad Hallick)
Offers: Stanford, Boston College, Indiana, Iowa State, Rutgers, Massachusetts
Production: As a sophomore against really bad competition (10th percentile of Stanford recruits), Hoitink was named first team all conference as an offensive lineman (mostly right guard with some right tackle), the only sophomore on his team to be first or second team at any position. There were only four first team offensive linemen, with the others being a senior going to Northern Illinois, a senior going to Northern Iowa, and another senior. I don't see stats formally reported but Hoitink reports that his team averaged over 200 yards rushing per game and that he did not allow a sack as a sophomore. Hoitink also started as a freshman, playing center. In track and field as a freshman he had a 42'4" shot put outdoors and a 42'9.5" shot put indoors and a 137'9" discus. There's no point comparing those to personal records of other Stanford recruits as they had all of high school to accrue their marks whereas Hoitink has only done his freshman year in track and field but they seem like good marks for a freshman. Regardless, we have much more strength data by virtue of his competitive power lifting. Less than two weeks ago he set marks of (all official conversions from kilograms) 562.2 pounds in the squat, 385.8 pounds in the bench press, and 584.2 pounds in the dead lift. I'll defer to those who know power lifting but those seem like a lot for a high school sophomore. Indeed, his tweet said the dead lift is an under 18 national record in his weight class, which is a big man weight class at over 300 pounds.
Highlights: That there even are varsity highlights as a freshman is the notable thing. I don't know what else to say, especially since he didn't play anybody good (as far as I could tell the one team with the two notable aforementioned OL played those guys on OL too rather than DL, so no head-to-head matchups against future college players to assess). Hoitink blocked the guys in front of him and that he was a starting center as a freshman is noteworthy. Still wasn't playing anybody as a sophomore but the highlights look completely different - second level blocks, pulling as a guard, pass protection. Big development between freshman and sophomore year can be expected but it's hard to overstate how much more movement there is on the sophomore highlights.
Troy Taylor has a commit truly of his own! Not an inherited recruit, not a Plan C emergency filler, not a transfer, but a bona fide underclassman Taylor's staff offered themselves and got to commit. Amazingly it's the first offered recruit of his class and he took us up on it. That is super rare for us. To use Harbaugh parallels, this is the Shayne Skov of the new Taylor era in terms of a rising junior taking an early leap of faith on a rebuilding program that offered him early. I suspect Hoitink's profile will end up considerably lesser than Skov's but we'll see. It's hard to project linemen, especially sophomores and especially sophomore linemen playing weak competition, but what I think we can say is Hoitink is a credible recruit who seems to be in the general range of most Stanford OL recruits. To have two of those already for the 2025 class (including hopefully returning missionary Zak Yamauchi) is a nice start to what will be Taylor's first real chance to go through a full cycle, especially considering the importance of rebuilding credibility in the trenches. In the meantime, we still have to build out a 2024 class so I'll continue to eagerly await Taylor's first 2024 commit (Jamir Benjamin a Shaw recruit).
