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Hazell cleaned up here.

On offense all but three players began their career with him as the coach; so "his" recruiting classes.

On Defense, all but four guys. Plus the punter.

So he has more recruits on this list than Tiller, Hope and Brohm combined.

In fact Rondale Moore is the only one that came in under Brohm. The rest of the non-Hazell recruits are all Tiller/Hope recruits, and there are only a few of those guys sprinkled in.

Yeah, it's kind of odd. 

Hazell recruited QB very well, before letting them into John Shoop's care to be ruined. 

Hazell oddly recruited LB better than anyone I've seen at Purdue--he got guys who actually looked and played like B1G linemen. Tiller was more in the mold of "let's recruit LB's to play DE and safeties to play LB", and Hope was all about recruiting speed--spent a lot of time picking up the guys that weren't good enough for the big Florida schools but would jump at the chance for P5 program even if it's in Indiana.  

But I'd say a lot of the Hazell guys on this list are lauded more for how they played when Brohm's coaching staff got a hold of them. Brohm wasn't here long enough for his own recruits to really show up on this list, because his 2017 class was half Hazell's to start with, and the only instant impact guy in his 2018 class was Moore--and anyone in his 2018 class that only played in 2019 or his top-end 2019 guys (David Bell, Milton Wright, George Karlaftis) only played one year and therefore were ineligible for this list. All three of them would have made this list based purely on their freshmen seasons. 

BTW--and I mentioned this in another thread on the topic--there is some issue with the entry criteria to even being voted on was HM-or-better on all-B1G lists. When Hope and Hazell were coaching, the teams were bad enough that it was HARD for a Purdue player to get looked at for those lists. I recall Akeem Shavers and Akeem Hunt at the RB position being very good, and either could have given Knox/Jones a run for their money in those spots, but I don't recall them being eligible for the vote at the time. Several other positions weren't voted on, and I assume it's because there was only one player at the position that was even eligible based on the HM-or-better criteria so ELA didn't hold a vote. 

I'm not complaining about the criteria; it's hard to have something that pleases everyone. But the criteria is a lot easier to have multiple players to vote on at each position for teams in the top half of the league than teams which spent those years in the bottom half of the league putting up putrid numbers.

Yeah, the class range covered here is from 07-18. So Brohm only has the one year that is covered by this list, and Tiller two. But Hazell only had 5 out of 12 classes represented on this list; less than half, but well over 3/4 of the players. Hope had one third of the classes (4 out of 12), but only a few of the players.

So it looks, according to this data, like Hope left Hazell a bare cupboard, then Hazell set the table for Brohm.

Or, Hazell squandered whatever Hope left him, and Brohm turned carbon into diamonds with effective coaching. 

And to be fair, I don't think Hope left much for Hazell. I'm not defending Hope. But Hazell was 3-25 against B1G teams and 33% of his 9 wins over 4 seasons were against FCS. It was the darkest timeline for Purdue football.

And Hazell didn't recruit well BTW. If you look at recruiting rankings, Purdue was basically last in the conference every year of his tenure. I don't think in any reasonable world you can say he "set the table" for Brohm. It's not like he was bringing in blue chips and not developing them. He was bringing in bottom-of-the-P5 players and then doing nothing to make them better.

For Purdue fans at least, we excuse Brohm's relatively poor <.500 record over 3 years and gave him a crap-ton of money because we know the hole that Hazell put the program in. 

Oh okay.

So it was more of a case of Brohm making Hazell look like the top recruiter of the bunch by figuring out a way to win with the mess that he left in his wake.

Makes sense.

But yeah, Hope and Hazell were back to back duds for the Boilers; aside from of course their propensity to give OSU fits. Tiller and Brohm are clearly the best coaches to take bites out of the range covered by this list. But it was the last two Tiller years, which were somewhat craptastic iirc.

Yeah, Brohm took Hazell's recruits and scrapped and clawed to two .500 regular season finishes, before an injury-derailed 2019 dropped to 4-8. 

Whereas I still say Jim Colletto did a decent job as a recruiter, but not as a coach, which is why Tiller came in and turned a team that had gone 3-8 the year before into an 8-3 squad which then won its bowl game to finish 9-3. 

Tiller's problem is that he never quite turned his on-field success into recruiting wins. He came into the conference with a dynamic spread offense that Big Ten defenses weren't even equipped to defend. They didn't have the rosters or the schemes to defend 5 wide when the rest of the conference was ground & pound. In a way it was similar to Mike Leach, although he wasn't of the "air raid" lineage. 

But eventually teams started recruiting differently, and Tiller couldn't adapt. He got to the point that if he had equal talent to his opponent [or better], Tiller was great. If he was facing a team with legit top-end talent, they'd just jam receivers at the LOS with press man coverage, completely disrupt the timing of the offense, and a QB like Curtis Painter wasn't good enough to overcome it. And even then he had 10 of 12 years with >.500 finishes.

Tiller went out leaving the cupboard not exactly bare, but not great for Hope, too. His final season was the end of the road for top passer Curtis Painter, top rusher & #4 receiver Kory Sheets, and the #1 and #2 pass-catchers in Greg Orton and Desmond Tardy. There were still some good players on that roster in 2009; quite a few on the defensive side of the ball. But Tiller's recruiting was NEVER stellar.