Michigan State football recruiting 'a typical Mark Dantonio class' for 2020

EAST LANSING — It has been a busy week of checking the boxes for Michigan State football recruiting.

Kicker? Check.

Defensive ends? Check.

Quarterback? Well, not yet.

The Spartans landed four commitments in five days for their 2020 class last week, but then lost out on two 4-star quarterback recruits who picked other schools — Michael Alaimo to Purdue and Chubby Purdy to Louisville.

Still, MSU’s current eight-player group of pledges fits a pattern that Mark Dantonio’s program has become known for: a passion for football, mid-grade rankings from recruiting services and an intense desire to prove they belong at a big-time program.

“I think it’s really good how they’re getting these guys who are kind of under the radar I would say,” said 3-star defensive end Kyle King, who began the recent run on June 14. “But you can tell these guys are ballers just by their film. People are always talking about stars and ratings and all of this, but I don’t really think that’s the point. Whoever is gonna be a baller is gonna be a baller, whoever is gonna give effort is gonna give effort. You can’t teach effort.”

The Spartans are building a very Dantonio-like class that includes a 4-star legacy recruit — safety Darius Snow from Texas  — and seven 3-star prospects, including a highly regarded specialist in kicker Jack Olsen from Illinois. The group was ranked No. 57 nationally and 10th in the Big Ten, according to 247 Sports, going into this weekend.

Three defensive players — defensive end Kyle King from Indiana, linebacker/defensive end Jeff Pietrowski from Ohio and linebacker Cal Haladay from Pennsylvania — joined in-state products — offensive lineman Dallas Fincher from East Kentwood, tight end Tommy Guajardo from Dearborn and wide receiver Ian Stewart from Gibraltar Carlson — in rounding out the current commitments.

And that was going into a weekend during which a number of other key targets were arriving on campus to check in with Dantonio and his staff before the dead period begins Monday.

“It’s gonna be a typical Mark Dantonio class,” said Bill Kurelic, a recruiting analyst for 247 Sports. “It likely won’t be a top-10 recruiting class, but it will be a class that he develops.”

MSU had 17 players who will be seniors this fall on its spring roster. It also could lose a few juniors to the NFL draft a year early, as well as the usual annual attrition for a variety of reasons (playing time, academics, etc.) that is typical for a Football Bowl Subdivision program.

“In recruiting, certainly how highly they are ranked doesn’t matter once they get there,” Kurelic said. “But you still want to get the very best prospects. Recruiting is a combination of getting as good of prospects as you can, and then developing them. That’s one thing that Mark Dantonio and his staff have done very well, develop players.”

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King — who picked the Spartans over offers from Indiana, Miami (Ohio), Army, Illinois State, Massachusetts and Yale — said MSU’s program reminds him of his state championship program in New Palestine, Indiana. His head coach there, Kyle Ralph, played offensive line for North Carolina from 2002-05.

“I’m a huge college football fan, and I understand what Michigan State represents,” Ralph said. “Our program down here is based very much on development and hard work, long-term commitment to that process of what it takes to being a great football player. … I think that what he saw in Michigan State was something very similar. It felt a lot like the program we run down here.”

King believes that allowed him to pick MSU this early in the summer and should help ease his transition to college.

“I really liked the coaching staff. They stood out a ton to me,” King said. “If you have a great coach, a player is gonna follow that regardless. Coach Dantonio, coach (Chuck) Bullough and coach (Ron) Burton are all really good coaches — first off, that’s what really drew me toward them. And then how they built the program, the culture is basically a blue-collar, hard-working type of program. That’s what really stood out to me. … It’s very similar.”

Haladay also is a two-time Pennsylvania state champion at South Columbia High in Catawissa. His coach, Jim Roth, said MSU sent a barrage of assistant coaches to watch Haladay, who had offers from Michigan, Nebraska and Pitt among others but not Ohio State or nearby Penn State.

Bullough, the former MSU linebacker who played and coached in the NFL, “was the final piece,” Roth said.

“It was an interesting situation, because the schools that offered (Haladay) thought he was good — as good as anybody that was out there — but he didn’t have a ton of major college offers when it came down to it,” Roth said. “The kind of kid he is and just seeing how he’s developed the last couple years … I just think he’s gonna be a real productive player.”

Roth used a lot of the words about Haladay that others have about this MSU class: hard worker, good character, strong bloodlines.

Other programs had concerns about the size of the now 6-1, 205-pound Haladay, whose father, Greg, wrestled at Penn State and was the 1990 NCAA heavyweight runner-up to Kurt Angle. Roth thinks Haladay can fill out his frame to complement his football-savvy mind.

“He has a strong mentality on the field for the game,” Roth said. “I told all the coaches in the recruiting process that I sum up his demeanor on the field by telling him that we have to remind him on a fairly regular basis at practice that they’re our players, because he pretty much has one speed and one mentality. He just goes hard all the time.”

Olsen said he committed before the dead period so he can focus on training and working on his kicking game before getting to MSU. The No. 3-ranked kicker nationally, according to 247 Sports, said there is a lot of energy with the players who have joined the Spartans recently, with Snow — the son of MSU basketball great Eric Snow — being the pied piper of the class.

“We all have our group chat and it’s just fun getting to know everyone," Olsen said. "We’ve all been talking a lot, and now we’re just trying to build up our class. Now, it’s about getting as many guys as we can to join the family and getting the best players and people we can.”

Kurelic pointed to two players who were expected to visit MSU this weekend — 4-star linebacker Jaheim Thomas from Cincinnati Princeton (on Friday) and 3-star safety Rickey Hyatt from Westerville, Ohio (on Sunday) — as primary targets. He also said the Spartans were “perhaps the leader” for 3-star tight end Luke Lachey from Columbus, Ohio, who visited Tuesday.

Recent rules changes allowing football players to make official visits in the spring have led to more kids making commitments in May and June, Kurelic added. And coaches want to fill spots before July, so they can go on vacation and enjoy a month off before their attention turns to preseason practice.

Which made this weekend important for recruiting.

 “You get to the middle of June, and that’s right before the start of the dead period. So this is really the last chance they have to get kids in on campus to make official visits and all before the start of the football season,” Kurelic said. “Generally speaking, this is their last shot, so they want to get these kids in if they think they need to get them in and get a chance to get a commitment from them before the season starts.”

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Contact Chris Solari at csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Read more on the Michigan State Spartans and sign up for our Spartans newsletter.