A look at Tennessee recruiting as 2014 class hits 30-player mark

[gdoc link=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgBQnqCTaaxzdDFkQjlNckE4dTlJV1ZXMUFMYjd2TUE&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” height=”600″]

KNOXVILLE, Tennessee — Tennessee’s 2014 signing class officially hit the 30-player mark on Saturday night when Dimarya Mixon verbally committed to the Vols.

So that means the Vols are finished, right?

Not quite. Although we think 30 is the magic number for 2014 (with five counting against the 2013 signing class), the Vols have a number of targets they are still actively recruiting.

In some years, the players likely to get nudged aside or asked to “grayshirt”* are obvious. But this year the class is so consistently good from top to bottom that there are few clear-cut options.

So what happens now? That will be one of the more interesting recruiting storylines of the next two months.

(The spreadsheet below is a hypothetical projection and should not be taken as a rigid outline of the class or the current roster).

[gdoc link=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgBQnqCTaaxzdHdmMDg5ZnlaZFl3VlAzNXRMSEpyeWc&single=true&gid=0&output=html&widget=true” height=”600″]

* What does grayshirting mean? It usually happens like this: The team asks a prospect to push back his enrollment one semester — say, from summer of 2014 to January of 2015. That way, the prospect counts against the 2015 class, freeing up space in the 2014 class. Players who suffer a major injury are sometimes asked to “grayshirt” so they will be fully healthy when they arrive on campus.