The Top Five Recruits from Mike Gundy’s Best-Ever Recruiting Class (2006)

I didn’t know how my look back at the class of 2005 — Mike Gundy’s first — would be received, but my data people (i.e. me) tell me that it was a hit. So we’re onto the next one. Here’s a look back at yesterday’s look back at the top five recruits of the class of 2005.

2005

Now for 2006. Here they are.

1. Derek Burton: 4-star
2. Terrance Anderson: 4-star
3. Perrish Cox: 4-star
4. Alex Cate: 4-star
5. Ugo Chinasa: 4-star

That’s … wait … how many 4-star guys is that in the same class??!

That’s only one fewer than Gundy’s last three classes combined (Illingworth, Boomer, Glass, Moore, Sanders, Anderson).

I didn’t remember Burton being so highly rated out of Muskogee. He was the No. 3 player in the state that year behind a couple of pros and in front of a couple of others. Look at this list of guys out of OK and where they all ended up going!

Anderson played all four years, including his true freshman year, and was productive. But Perrish Cox and Ugo Chinasa were the real gems here.

Chinasa (Richardson, Texas — where I live) was an All-Big 12 player, and Cox (Waco) played six seasons in the NFL. He was a star, and the evidence came early when he returned a kick for a TD in his first game of his first year in Stillwater. Imagine if Brennan Presley did that in 2020.

Cate, uh, ushered in the Brandon Weeden era, and once was on a rec softball team that lost to a group of MBA students in the Shamrock Softball Tournament out by the Stillwater airport.

Other players in this class included Dantrell Savage, who was a top-25 guy out of juco, Keith Toston, Russell Okung and Orie Lemon. It was a great class — Gundy’s best ever — and it included 12 top-500 guys and six that were ranked in the top 250. OSU’s last four classes combined included just 12 top-500 guys (including Chuba, Sanders, Moore, Tylan and Illingworth).

It’s amazing looking back on this how much differently OSU used to recruit. They’ve never (and will never) get five-star players. It’s just not going to happen. But they landed so many top-500 guys and so many more four-stars. This class went on to finish 18th nationally — the highest a Gundy class has ever finished — in recruiting and fourth in the Big 12. It was Gundy’s best ever, and over the next four years those true freshmen (Cox, Okung etc.) would go on to win 32 games leading into Gundy’s only Big 12 title the year after they left.