2016 Class Rankings: How does Pitt stack up?

Narduzzi and his staff have spent the last year hitting the ground hard to put together their 2016 recruiting class, and the results are showing.

Last year, Pitt did not finish well among the major recruiting services mostly because of the very small size of the class as we pointed out. This year, with a full class and a full year on the road, there's no context needed:

Recruiting Class Rankings (as of 3:40 pm on 2/3/16)

Rivals: 30th

247: 25th

Scout: 26th

ESPN: 38th

You'll notice one of those is not near the others. ESPN is regarded somewhat as a black sheep in the recruiting world. 247 Rivals and Scout may have some differences but ESPN can be way off.

Currently, this class is roughly the best rankings wise since 2008. Pitt's best class under Paul Chryst was roughly 33-35 in the 2013 class (the Tyler Boyd class). Speaking of Paul Chryst, he signed the highest rated Wisconsin class ever in his first year, but it was lower than Narduzzi's first class here.

Here are some of the teams Pitt out did in the rankings:

Mississippi State

Wisconsin

Duke

North Carolina

Louisville

West Virginia

Virginia Tech

Oklahoma State

Georgia Tech

Not only did Narduzzi get highly rated players, he also filled a lot of the gaps in talent especially on the defensive side of the ball. Both defensive backs and defensive line have gone from weaknesses to possibly big strengths in a year or two. We'll be breaking things down more the rest of the week and through the offseason, but it's hard to dislike what Narduzzi has done with his first full class.

The fun part? Junior Day for 2017 recruits is on Saturday, and we start the whole process over again.