They might not have quite the games of Tim Hardaway, Mitch Richmond or Chris Mullin, when they balled with the Golden State Warriors of the NBA, nor perhaps have the rap sensibilities of their almost musical namesakes. But Virginia Tech sophomores Zabian Dowdell, Jamon Gordon, and Coleman Collins share several things in common, chief among them the fact that they are starting to make a whole lot of experts look pretty silly right about now.

Collins, Dowdell and Gordon have been front and center this year in the emergence of the Hokies, stepping up with improved games which happen to coincide with a Virginia Tech team -with its four ACC victories - that has already won more games than many thought was possible in their first season of conference play.

Dowdell leads the team in scoring at 14.9 a game while Collins has rebounded strongly from an early season injury to get his average up to almost 12 points per game. Gordon is the third double figure scorer of the trio and the team’s leading defensive player.

With the winter signing period in football coming up on Wednesday and most eyes keenly focused upon those players that ink on the dotted line, along with their projected rankings from all of the national football gurus, it seems a good time to look back just a couple of years at these triplets on the basketball court and see if their success was predicted at all by those whose job it is to keep up with such information.

Now, not all of us can be recruiting gurus. I certainly don’t claim to be one, although I have stayed at a Holiday Inn on numerous occasions. In fact, looking at this class makes one think that more than a couple basketball “experts” might have been asleep on the comfort of a waterbed on the eighth floor of their favorite Holiday Inn, at least where this triumvirate is concerned.

To say that this trio was underrated is an understatement. In at least one case, that of Collins, you have someone that was almost totally off the radar. In fact, a look at the national rankings of three nationally respected recruiting publications shows exactly how little was expected of each of the three. In using Prep Stars Recruiter’s Handbook, Bob Gibbons All Star Sports Report, and the ACC Sports Journal, we can vividly see that this particular class was not very highly thought of.

Gibbons, who is probably the most respected guru in the business, had Gordon as his #107-rated player in the 2003 class, in his spring rankings. Gordon had dropped from his #91 ranking of the Fall, which is published immediately after the Fall signing period in basketball. In Gibbons’ pre-summer rankings, those prior to the evaluation period of July when most coaches formulate their recruiting priorities, Gordon was not listed at all in Gibbons’ Top 100. Furthermore, Gibbons did not have Gordon listed at all among his top 500 prospects at that time, prior to the summer.

The Hokies evaluated Gordon during the summer, extended an offer to him and had him commit and sign prior to Gibbons’ published Fall rankings, which showed him catapulting into the Top 100.

While Gordon showed a significant rise in Gibbons’ rankings after the Hokies had signed him, Dowdell and Collins stayed significantly below Gordon in Gibbons’ rankings. Neither Dowdell nor Collins was listed in Gibbons’ Top 500 players in his pre-summer rankings. Dowdell did make an appearance on Gibbons’ Fall rankings, although he was not in the Top 200 players. Gibbons groups all of those not listed in his Top 200 at that time in alphabetical order. His Fall rankings incorporate 800 names, so all that can be determined for Dowdell is that he was somewhere between 201-800 in the Fall. By All Star Sports final 2003 rankings, published in the spring, Dowdell had jumped to the #166 position.

Collins was an even bigger omission across the board. He was not listed in the Top 500 pre-summer list by Gibbons, nor was he listed in the Fall Top 800 either. Tech signed Collins in November of 2002, and when Gibbons’ Fall Top 800 rankings came out shortly after that, Collins was nowhere to be found, an almost astounding omission. At the conclusion of Collins’ senior year in high school, he had finally made it onto an All Star Sports list, albeit not in Gibbons’ Top 250 players, instead being listed among those next 500 other players.

While this is ample evidence that either these players were largely unnoticed, underrated or unappreciated by Gibbons, the ratings aren’t any better from the ACC Sports Journal or the Recruiter’s Handbook.

The Recruiter’s Handbook listed their Top 300 players in the Class of 2003 in the spring of 2003. The highest ranked player on the Virginia Tech campus, on the Handbook’s list, came in at #250. That player has yet to suit up for Virginia Tech in basketball. His name was Justin Harper, and Harper is applying his skills on the football field, after signing in the Fall of 2002 to play basketball at Winthrop, Harper had a change of heart, as well as change of sports, before eventually finding himself in Blacksburg, where he is a wide receiver on the football team.

Jamon Gordon was the Handbook’s highest rated Tech basketball player at #266, with Dowdell coming in at #298. Collins was not ranked at all in the Top 300, instead being listed alphabetically in a large group of 160 players who were outside the Top 300.

The ACC Sports Journal had very similar listings for the three players as well, going further and ranking the Tech class for that year with the other ACC programs and a couple other regional programs. The Journal ranked the nine ACC programs at that time, while including Virginia Tech, Charlotte, South Carolina and East Carolina. The Hokies were considered to have had the 12th ranked class among the 13 that the Journal ranked in the ACC region.

Gordon at #268 was the highest rated player for the Hokies, and Dowdell was the #300 player. Collins was close behind at #314, which was coincidentally his highest rating among the three recruiting sources.

Regardless of how much love was shown to this recruiting class as a whole, and to the players individually, it has become clear that they have arrived at Tech and been much better than advertised. Every person can miss on players, but this appears to be a case where each player has turned out to be much better than thought, while the class as a whole is considerably better than given credit for at the time of the rankings.

What the Hokie nation has discovered is that each player has been an early and vital contributor to the success of the team. That doesn’t happen that frequently, and then to consider that there was really no one out there that even remotely came close to predicting the success makes one pause.

Collins has proven to be a bona fide inside force. Given his outstanding speed and athleticism, he would appear to be a player that should have fit the mold of a fine prospect coming out of high school. Given his youth, intelligence and offensive capabilities, he would certainly seem an ideal candidate and projection to play at the highest level of college basketball, which he happens to be doing right now.

Dowdell is a solid ball handler who has shown poise and a willing inclination to take important late game shots. He doesn’t rattle easily, and he can knock down threes or show a mid-range pull up game. He has gotten better this year and looks to be a distinct possibility at becoming the end-of-game go to player that every team needs.

Gordon has proven himself to be a player who can impact the game in several different areas. He leads the team in assists, steals, rebounding and blocked shots. That is no misprint. A 6-2 sophomore guard is leading an ACC team in both rebounds and blocked shots. And by the way, Gordon also happens to be the best defensive player on the team and one of the best in the entire ACC. You think any other conference teams could use such a player?

As we stand captured at the news that is coming across the internet, frantically searching all the message boards for any information about the latest football commitments leading up to Wednesday, hoping to find Virginia Tech highly ranked by Super Prep or Rivals or any of the various other recruiting sites, it’s good to know that the football program is poised to have an outstanding recruiting year. It might even end up being a Top 10 recruiting season, which will invigorate and rightly excite everyone.

When contrasted with basketball, which signed two players back in the fall, neither of whom have much national cache, it makes you realize that the basketball recruiting year isn’t quite up to the standards that are being set by the football program.

Hyman Taylor? Terrence Vinson? Do either of these guys have any type of national reputation, and can Virginia Tech possibly expect to stay competitive in the ACC, while narrowing the talent gap with those type of players? Virginia Tech must do better. They must obtain players that are nationally ranked players. That is the avenue to long term success, right?

Perhaps it is, but we should also consider the possibility that snap judgements should not necessarily be made on every player and every recruiting class. Taylor and Vinson are definitely under the radar and definitely not players who are highly rated. Let us see what they have to offer when they arrive and not pre-judge them.