Thoughts on Barkley Hill’s Switch to Iowa

I wrote a large post yesterday about Iowa State’s recruiting mess that has happened in the last couple of days.  You can find the article here.  Towards the end, I talked about the status of Barkley Hill because of his recent visit to Iowa.  Well, Hill switched his commitment to Iowa yesterday.  However, there is some good news.  Devlyn Cousin, a 3-star defensive tackle from Georgia, committed to the Cyclones yesterday.

I’ll focus about Barkley Hill in this post.  I said it was in the air whether or not Hill would keep with the Cyclones.  Thinking about, I’m more surprised though.  I mentioned that Courtney Messingham was his lead recruiter and it couldn’t hurt that Messingham was promoted to offensive coordinator.  I can understand that he sees a lot of depth at running back at Iowa State right now and he likely wouldn’t have played right away.  Knowing that though, why would you want to play running back at Iowa?  I know it is probably a better program than Iowa State but when was the last time an incoming Hawkeye running back lasted?  The position is a revolving door at Iowa because players are getting in trouble for all sorts of issues.

Losing Barkley Hill hurts Iowa State, but it is far from a knock out.  He was Iowa State’s only running back commit, so losing that could be a problem.  However, it wasn’t a spot that the Cyclones need help at right away.  I was on HawkeyeNation.com’s forums (a mistake) today and they were criticizing ISU fans who were excited about Hill yesterday, but now don’t seem bothered by him leaving.  Maybe other fans were really excited about Barkley Hill, but I wasn’t one of them.  Yes, he would be addition and I’ve already mentioned that he would have added depth to the position.  Was he going to make a difference?  I don’t think so (I could end up being wrong).  Hill isn’t big (Rivals.com has him at 6’0 and that might be generous and 190 pounds), isn’t fast (reportedly runs around a 4.9), and has dealt with some injuries which won’t make him faster anytime soon.

All in all, it isn’t good that he left and especially to the instate rival (even more that it is right before Signing Day), but I’m not going to lose sleep over it.

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