Jonathan Smith opens up on his recruiting presence in Ohio

Following the 2023 regular season, Michigan State brought in Jonathan Smith to be the team’s next head coach. For someone who spent the majority of his career in the Northwest, that gave him very little time ahead of signing day to get acquainted with the key recruiting areas for Michigan State.

Among those key recruiting areas is the state of Ohio. Smith knows that establishing a presence in Ohio matters and he shared that he did his best to do that ahead of signing day and will continue to do that as his time with Michigan State goes on.

“That’s a big area,” Jonathan Smith said. “There’s a lot of good players. There’s a lot of good high school coaches and, again, I’m not trying to claim like I’m the expert yet, but our intention will be to use these months to get around those high school coaches because there’s players there.”

Michigan State has the 47th-ranked recruiting class in the 2024 cycle, according to the On3 Industry Rankings. That class was, undeniably, impacted by the coaching change and there is still time to add to that class for Smith and his staff.

For its part, Ohio has 13 four-star recruits in the 2024 cycle. Eight of those players are committed or signed to play at Big Ten schools and all are set to attend a Power Five school.

The Spartans currently have three players in their 2024 class from the state of Ohio, all of whom are three-star recruits. The highest rated among those three recruits is an offensive lineman, Mercer Luniewski. As Jonathan Smith continues to build those relationships with players and coaches in Ohio, he’ll continue to recruit talented players to the team.

“We wanted to make some inroads in three weeks in these hotbed locations where players are – this state, Ohio, within driving distance. Give us a little time, we’re gonna get there.”

Greg McElroy praised the Jonathan Smith hire

Following the hiring of Jonathan Smith, analyst Greg McElroy praised the move, calling it as good a hire as there was this year.

“I think this is as good of a hire as we’ve seen in the sport this year. You look at just rank the hires, right? Jonathan Smith and Kalen DeBoer, to me, are, like, 1a and 1b. I love this hire for Michigan State. [Smith] has done a great job of keeping a keen eye on the under the radar talent. He understands the player development piece. He also won at a program at Oregon State that most people thought was a very difficult place to consistently find success,” McElroy said.

“He did so by morphing the offense into a pro-style, physical rushing attack. You’re not going to be able to just run it down people’s throats in the Big Ten. It’s just not going to happen. The defenses are too good and they’re too proud against the run. But I think Jonathan Smith is one of those super-aware coaches that respects the opposition while still maintaining their own offensive identity. That’s a tough thing to balance – a really tough thing to balance. I know this – I know Michigan State is going to be tough as nails on offense. I don’t know how much talent they’re going to have, how many points they’re going to have. But I can promise you that they’re going to be tough as nails.”