Just as basketball players tend to get most of their attention through their AAU teams, high level soccer players tend to gain recognition and polish their skills through the Player Development Academy (PDA) or the Olympic Development Program. The players brought in by Mike O'Neill - his first recruiting class as head coach - represent those programs.
In the Class of 2015, New Jersey was tied for the fourth most D1 players (64) in the country, behind California, Texas, and Florida. As with football, mining the wealth of talent in the Garden State can prove invaluable to a program that finished the 2014 season in the Top 25.