are a periodic subject discussion. I decided to go ahead and make a list of them. The following list is only Freshmen, and does not include transfers and Jucos (where a higher percentage are 3-stars):
E=ESPN, R=Rivals, S=Scout, 2=247Sports (starts in 2012)

2008 (2/15) - G. Moore (R), Tremayne Scott (R)
2009 (4/17) - Lechner (ESR), Hughes (ER), Woseley (R) Gary Fortune (R)
2010 (0/12) - none
2011 (11/22) - Russell (ER), L. Smith (S), Crutcher (ES), Price (R), T. Davis (S), Welter (ESR), Haser (S), Hammonds (S), Bennett (S), Powell (R), Venham (E)
2012 (8/13) - Gibbons (R), S. Smith (ESR2), Watson (E), Schany (ER), Windham (E2), Tanner (E), Laseak (E2), Patterson (E)
2013 (7/19) - Wyatt (E), Quallen (2), Alexander (S), Murdock (R2), Morgan (2), Ced. Brown (2), Leavitt (S)
2014 (9/17) - Duckworth (ESR2), Lowery (ESR2), Walker (E2), Brumfield (S), Brunson (S), Con Brown (2), Dudziak (S), Royster (S), McCray (ESR2)

During the Germano years, there were a few 3-star players recruited.

During the Isphording year none were recruited.

During the Haines years, about half the recruits have 3-star ratings by at least one service. Many of the players for 2014 have yet to be rated by all the services, so I'd expect the numbers to grow, and by the time it's all done, it will probably end up in the 50% range, too. It's the 2011-2012 classes that really played a lot this year, and will be moving into starting roles next year as Sophomores and Juniors.

Damn. I thought Sayles was a 3-star recruit. Oh well....my money is on him to be well above average in his career at OHIO.

Indeed,you can look back at that list of 3-star players, and note that some of them have yet to contribute, or have contributed only sparingly. So far as I know Eric Price and John Tanner have never played, for example. Jacob Welter, Andrew Bennett, and Justin Haser have played, but not much. Of course, there may be complicating factors. I know, for example, that the reason John Tanner hasn't played has been injury, and I know that the reason Haser has only played a little so far is that he went through a position switch, from DL to OT. I don't know the story on the others, but I hope that all these 3-star players will shine in the next couple years.

One final thought is this. The recruiting services put out their 4-5 star ratings very early, but the 2-3 star players take much longer to rate. Ohio makes it's initial round of offers before those players are generally rated. Ohio makes their offers to a group of players that they deem to be of sufficient skill level, and I would say based on what I see, that most of the players they offer end up being rated 3 stars, with some ending up higher. That tells you the skill level they think they can successfully recruit to Ohio.

Once the recruiting services get done, about half of the verbals end up being 3-star players. In the other half are players the coaches thought had similar skill levels, but players that the services elected to call 2-stars, for whatever reason. As we've seen this year, though, from Sales, Basham, Mangen, Stewart, and Wood, those guys may well be good players, too.I continue to believe that most of the 2-star guys they get are probably high-2-stars, and  most of the 3-star players they get are probably low-3-stars, which is why we see as little difference as we do.

Not that this is the be all, end all, but it is rather interesting to see we had zero 3-star guys in 2010. Those guys would be getting lots of playing time in 2013. Maybe this season wasn't really a matter of playing bad. Maybe we just didn't have the players.

Some people just can't help bringing up we played terrible for so much of the year, especially the key games.

Using this metric, I looked at the other recruiting classes in the MAC, as reported by Scout. Clearly WMU has the best class, giving that they have 15 3-stars, and 28 total recruits. Basically Ohio is in a cluster tied for 2d, with BG, Ball State, and Ohio having almost all their players ranked:
WMU has 18/23 rated, of which 15 are 3-stars, plus 3 jucos and 2 not yet evaluated
Ohio is 10/12, of which 5 are 3-stars
BG is 11/12 with another one that hasn't been evaluated yet, but only 2 are 3-stars
Ball State is  12/15 with 7 3-stars.

The rest of the MAC has about 1/3 of the players rated, about where Ohio was in 2008-2009.

Yes, but the gap isn't that large. The gap from those 3 to WMU is much larger, as is the gap behind them.

I personally expect Fleck to be a Ron Zook type, a guy that can recruit like crazy, but where the team never really realizes its full potential under him. As some others have said, he'll probably be gone within 4 years, one way or the other (either because he succeeds, or because he fails). At that point, if they bring in a coach who excels at player development it could be a very good WMU team.

Still, wouldn't you love to see 15 3-star recruits in a couple of our classes? How can WMU do this with the year they had and we can't?

From hoops a year or two ago, I remember Tunji Adepipe (spelling is probably incorrect).  Dude wasn't real big and he wasn't a greatly talented ballplayer.  But he fought like hell on the boards and no one intimidated Tunji.