I can't speak for everyone, but I find it hard to believe anyone thinks the sky is falling with Mejia, Jrent, The Bull and Young already committed.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I try to stay out of recruiting predictions and forecasting possible AAs and National Champions based on HS results. It's usually not as easy as it appears. Full disclosure: I have mentioned I like Mejia--especially his attitude and those around him.
Hall and Lee are the obvious gems. If you get one or both of those your team looks to be set at the weights they wrestle for 3 or 4 years. Are they locks? No, but they appear to have the potential and desire to compete for individual championships without many questions. They are both high value targets, but would Brands and Company ever commit more than 2 or 3 scholarships to an incoming class again?
Brands and Company were burned badly with the most recent group of seniors--they under performed expectations as a recruiting class. I suspect a lot of money was tied into this class which did not translate to points at NCAAs. This was the reload class after the recent title run. They were the #1 ranked class at the time they were recruited. It appeared to me, Brands and Company tried to replace everything they had lost in that one recruiting class. In hindsight it's easy to see they were burned by this strategy. Too much money tied into one recruiting class can cause problems that last 4 years if the class as a whole flops--see the years 2011-2015.*** [The most telling comment I heard from Tom Brands last season was a repeated, not so veiled statement about "...guys (those among the 5th year seniors last year) taking a little longer (than he'd hoped) to figure things out @Iowa and get going.."] I think he understood early on that they were not reloading with that class and the big commitment to that class was a mistake.
The idea that Brands and Company will load up with another super class appears unlikely to me. They were burned once and aren't the type to forget such a painful lesson.
My guess: Lee or Hall, but not both. Then again, as a fan, I'd like to see both in Black and Gold. As fans we can hope for the moon, but we don't have to live there if things go bad. It would seem more likely that Brands and Company get the guy who really fits and wants to buy into what Iowa Wrestling is meant to be. Is it Hall, Lee, both or neither? If they both truly fit that bill and want to be in the room it could happen that they both end up @Iowa. However, the smart money would seem to be more cautious about putting so much money in one class.
