Recruiting fans always will remember the players that their favorite team landed but will also remember the ones who got away, sometimes even more vividly than team successes.

No matter how good the recruiter is, be it Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer or Ryan Day, there are going to be kids who get away, or at least it appears that they got away.

But with only one signing period for much of the run of this series (the first year of the December signing period went into place for the class of 2018), how do you really say that you “had someone” who may or may not have given you a verbal commitment.

It got us to thinking about some of the names out there that still bother fans, the ones who flipped, the ones who never answered the call and ultimately ended up somewhere else.

As we are now into the month of July, let’s take a walk down memory lane and talk about a few of these names from the class of 2006 through the class of 2018. The jury is still out on classes from 2019 and beyond and my first year with the site was 2006, so that seems to be a good starting point.

2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009

This would end up being Jim Tressel’s last class as head coach of the Buckeyes with the 2011 season being the one-year transition with Luke Fickell at the helm for the season. This class would see a 19-man class and would only rank at No. 25 nationally as there were no “headliners” in the class according to the recruiting rankings with no RR 6.1 (five-star) or RR 6.0 (high four-star) players in the class. Ohio State’s highest rated recruits would end up being Andrew Norwell, Rod Smith, Corey ‘Philly’ Brown and Christian Bryant. This would also be the class that would include Carlos Hyde after his year at Fork Union and a pair of Ohio State’s lower rated recruits in the class would go on to lengthy NFL careers with Bradley Roby and Johnathan Hankins.

Latwan Anderson

There are no shortage of names in this class with Cleveland Glenville star Latwan Anderson being at the top of most lists. A five-star athlete that could do just about anything on the field, the Buckeyes got one of his five officials along with Cincinnati, Michigan State, WVU and Miami (Fla.) with the Canes winning this one out, but not on a football scholarship, but rather a track on. Anderson would bounce around and eventually end up at Norte Dame College in Cleveland, but never realizing an incredible amount of talent, it goes down as one of those stories as opportunity lost. Of course, Ohio State fans were not used to losing top talent, especially out of Ted Ginn Sr.’s. Glenville program, so this was nearly the end of the world at the time. There is no telling if he would have ended up at Ohio State, if the Buckeyes would have been able to intervene and maximize all that Anderson had to offer.

Sharrif Floyd

It came to me in a dream.

That’s all that needs to be said here. Is the whole Urban Meyer dream story true?

Does it matter? It makes for a great story.

Ohio State was doing everything right in this recruitment for the Philadelphia-area defensive star, it appeared that this one was on, if there were Rivals FutureCasts at the time, they would have all been firmly on the Buckeyes to land this player. Until the pre-Ohio State Meyer moved in and snatched Floyd away from the Buckeyes. Or so the story goes.

For not landing a five-star in the class, Ohio State sure was in on a lot of them and likely came in second place for a lot of these players in a contest where second place gets you nothing.

Lamarcus Joyner

Another five-star, another miss for Ohio State on this one.

Ohio State received an early-season official visit and while it always felt like it was going to be a tough pull, the Buckeyes remained active with the St. Thomas Aquinas star, knowing that they would have to survive a Notre Dame visit (they did) and a Florida State visit (we know how that went).

Ohio State only landed one defensive back (by position) in the class with Christian Bryant while both athletes in this class, Verlon Reed and Corey 'Philly' Brown would be tasked to the offensive side of the ball.

Of all four of the players we are highlighting here, Joyner may have been the least of the surprises, but there will be a page on him in most recruiting writer books, just as one of the most talented players to be seen during the recruiting process.

Jordan Hicks

Another rare in-state miss, from Lakota West high school, Hicks was another five-star that could have picked the school he wanted to go to, anywhere in the country. Ohio State fans wanted that school to be Hicks while it seemed as if Hicks was looking for any other school than Ohio State, for one reason or another.

The Buckeyes took their shot, got their official visit while Texas jumped in and managed to hold off the field and land one of the top national linebackers of the cycle.

This was probably the most painful of the losses, not because Ohio State thought that it had him at the last minute, because the overriding feel was that Ohio State was not the pick, but more because unlike Anderson, Hicks seemed to be a player that could be dropped into a system and flourish, immediately, whereas Anderson had his share of drama surrounding him.

Hicks proved that to be right and went on and had a tremendous career with the Longhorns.