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A few days ago, we asked you to vote on who you'd target if you were Gary Williams, based on talent, need, attainability, and just about anything else you wanted to throw in there for a little feature called the Big Board: it's a barometer of where Maryland's targets stand in the fans' eyes.
This is the third iteration of the Big Board, but the first since the two July open periods have ended. Well, the final standings are now solidified, and I'll let you in on a little secret: Nick Faust has taken the top spot.
Full rankings are below the jump:
Faust being #1 shouldn't surprise anyone; he's been tearing up the circuit and all of his rankings should rise when the Big 3 finally re-rank. Past him are Adjehi Baru and Jabari Brown, who were literally neck-and-neck; Baru overtook Brown in the final 30 votes.
If you're wondering how close the votes were, here's a graph:
You can kind of see the tiers developing: Faust, Baru/Brown, Harkless/DFS, Hopkins/Ross/Hubert, etc. A few observations:
- It looks like there's still a sizable contingent of fans that want Brown in first, which really pumped up his ranking. There's no doubt that landing either would be gigantic for Maryland, but landing both is a tad redundant.
- I expected LaQuinton Ross to be in the Harkless/DFS tier, especially after he did so well last time, but it looks like his relative aloofness (Harkless and DFS are rumored to be legitimate possibilities) combined with an average summer kept him down.
- I wonder if a more available Mikael Hopkins, now that Syracuse is out of the picture, would've scored higher.
- Ridiculous rankings (in a good way) for Harkless and DFS, both of whom went from being out of the Big Board entirely to being in the top 5.