Pat Fitzgerald and Michigan State have been cooking on the recruiting trail with their top targets and while many Spartan fans are hoping for more four-star success, they have to realize that he’s not turning this thing around overnight.
There are going to be more misses than hits on the recruiting trail and that’s just how it goes. When you offer over 100 kids, you’re going to miss on most of them.
Unfortunately, that includes some rising stars who give off that look of under-the-radar recruits but eventually become four-star prospects.
One of those types of recruits is George Murray III.
The unranked cornerback from Georgia looked to be a hidden gem for Michigan State with only Kansas State and Northwestern involved from the Power Four. Fitzgerald offered him a month ago and locked in an official visit, but the unranked cornerback visited Kansas State first and committed before ever making it to East Lansing.
I fully expect Murray to jump into the rankings when the next update happens on 247Sports and he may be slotted close to Michigan State’s most recent cornerback commit, Cordaro Parham.
This was a tough loss for the Spartans right before his scheduled official, but they made up for it.
Michigan State landed its own hidden gems
This past weekend may go down as one of the better ones from the early days of Fitzgerald not just because of the quantity of commitments, but also the quality.
Parham got things started with a commitment on Friday night. He was another unranked Georgia cornerback but immediately was given a ranking shortly after committing. “Shyne” Parham is now the No. 1,030 player in the country and the 96th-best cornerback on 247Sports.
The unranked Georgia cornerback wasn’t the only new Spartan commit flying under the radar but Zach Forbish, an unranked receiver from Texas, made his wat to East Lansing for an official and committed on Sunday night. He’s currently unranked, but he plays for one of the best high school teams in the talent-saturated state of Texas and he put up huge numbers in Frisco Lone Star’s state runner-up season in 2025. Forbish is going to soar in the rankings, in my opinion.
Lastly, Fitzgerald landed Lawrence Kanneh, who’s another underrated prospect from Ohio and who just dropped in the composite after committing to Michigan State, and three-star tight end Ryan Pankey who’s also not a top-ranked recruit.
Michigan State is building a very Mark Dantonio-esque class. Will this work in the NIL era? We’ll have to wait and see.
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