If you’re going to judge talent by star rankings, then it’s Beard by a landslide. He just nearly won the national title with a bunch of nobodies.
Harper was a 4 star. Wiley a 5. Purifoy, Spencer, Okeke, Mitchell, all 4s, etc. Several fours and a five in his current freshman class. Pearl has had talented and experienced players. Everyone has had a lower-ranked player that excelled. Rankings are fairly meaningless after the top 10 or 20. Patrick Mahomes was ranked about 400 for God’s sake. And he was doing the same shit in HS that he does now. His HS reel is absurd.
I wouldn’t say that Pearl got the most out of his team when they were 30-balled by a lower seed a few years ago. Or during last year’s regular season. And this year? I’d say they’ve done roughly what they should have. Some solid wins, some bad losses, and won a bunch that they should have. He’s probably getting a little too much credit for a team that got hot for a few games.
There’s really no comparing him to Beard in that dept right now.