The interesting thing that all the Ohio draftees have in common is that not one was a highly sought after recruit:
Blair Brown: Entered the program in stealth mode. If we noticed him, we barely did. He was reported to have offers from Florida Atlantic and Indiana.
Basham: No other offers, and unrated by everyone, and unknown until signing day. Here's his recruiting thread:
http://www.bobcatattack.com/messageboard/topic.asp?FromPa... TJ Carrie: Was unknown prior to signing day, unrated, with no other offers (no recruiting threads on him and the players that follow were before the great data loss)
Eric Herman: Unrated, but did have offers from BG, WMU, and Akron. He was known prior to signing day, and I still remember that there was some poster that was hostile to the offer to him, saying that he was terrible, and that there were much better prospects out there.
Brazill: Another signing day surprise, unrated, with no other offers
Mitchell and Cohen I don't know about.
The lesson here is this: Take the recruiting ratings with a grain of salt. They are much more accurate for schools at the top than schools at the bottom. Ratings correlate with a players chances at a place like OSU because the recruiting services spend a lot of time looking at their recruits. Ratings at a Ohio don't correlate at all because they spend very little time looking at them.