Gary Andersen spoke for a half hour during his National Signing Day press conference. BeaversEdge.com transcribed Andersen's quotes, and we give our take on what he said below.
HEADLINES
National Signing Day Takeaways | Baseball: Oregon State picked to win the Pac-12 | Signing Day Central
Opening Statement
Andersen: "It's a very successful day in my opinion. This is a group of kids that there has been a lot of battles for, a lot of hours have been put in for a number of people.
"It's been a tremendous, tremendous process that we've gone through. A few highlights for me are that we stuck with who we are. We recruited some high level kids, and we won many of those battles. Did we win them all? No. If you win them all, I don't think you're recruiting the right guys, but it was good to see us getting in those fights and go down to the wire.
We had [other schools] attack our guys and were able to hold people off. Again, we kept swinging until the end with some of the young men that we ended up not getting. I'm proud of our staff; they team recruited, which is vital to how we recruit. We stuck to who we are. We didn't pretend to be something we are not, and when I say that, we are Corvallis. We are Oregon State University. We are a college town, and we're dam(n) proud of that.
"The new facility, was big for us. It's still not completely completed, but people can still see what it is. Parents and kids can walk in here and understand that there is a true drive to be great on the field football and for students athletes as a whole.
"This staff did a great job of continually identifying young men as we went through the process. It got late in the running back position with the spots that we were. Coach Phillips - new hire - walks into Texas and gets two special running backs. We didn't flinch on what they were, how they were going about things, and we evaluated them with our own system. They passed our parameters with flying colors, and we were able to get those two kids in our program. It goes to show that we'll recruit who we want to recruit, how we want to recruit them, and when we want to recruit them."
Singer's take: Andersen is referring to Calvin Tyler and BJ Baylor as the two Texas running backs that Jason Phillips went in and got. I think that Tyler was a great late find for Oregon State, and while I do think that Baylor was a reach, Andersen feels very confident in him.
