The final surprise of National Signing Day 2002 came when highly acclaimed running back Lorenzo Booker broke his silence and announced his decision to attend Florida State over Notre Dame, Washington and USC.

There were no such surprises at Northwestern’s Signing Day press conference heralding head coach Randy Walker’s third Wildcats recruiting class. There was only potential for one down the road.

Let me explain. So far, Walker’s class has received more attention for the players who didn’t sign, not the 22 who did.

A Top-100 recruit can’t be found anywhere on the list.

NU doesn’t have an incoming freshman acclaimed as highly as current NU players Thomas Derricks and Tony Stauss.

Walker’s Class of 2002 will be, at best, ranked in the top 50 in the nation, according to ESPN recruiting guru Tom Lemming. But even more gut-wrenching is that Rivals100.com, a well-known recruiting Web site, has Walker’s class ranked as low as ninth or 10th in the Big Ten.

The world of preliminary rankings and preseason recruiting polls has things looking pretty dim for the Cats. In fact, the lights have all been turned out.

But things might not be as bad as they look.

Walker has always said that he looks to recruit the best quarterbacks that he can find, and he did that this year. Three of them, to be exact.

Walker also tries to go out and get the best athletes. And he did that again this year. A number of the coach’s 2002 recruits are earmarked as versatile athletes that will most likely end up playing a different position at NU than they did in high school.

Many who will be donning purple for the first time next year were multiple sport athletes in high school.

Things still looking grim? Wait, there’s more.

One thing Walker said he looked for in this year’s class was speed. And he got some of that, too.

Defensive back Marquice Cole ran a 10.5 second 100-meter dash in high school, better than anyone else in the state of Illinois.

And incoming wide receiver Brandon Horn has clocked a 4.5 in the 40.

“We’ve tried to improve our team speed across the board,” Walker said Wednesday. “I think by and large we hit the right things.”

Still think things are up in the air? Well, that’s because they are.

The Cats are relying on the fact that they’ve found a few diamonds in the rough in their new class. There’s no one, as you go down the list of the new signees, who jumps out as an immediate impact player.

There’s no Lorenzo Booker.

Walker even reluctantly admitted that NU hadn’t found everything it was looking for and would continue to fill holes after Wednesday with the couple of scholarships it has left.

Near the end of the press conference, Walker told a story, as he often does, about a big middle linebacker he once went up against at Miami (Ohio) who had “a mean snarl and very few teeth.”

Walker went on to say he later found out the kid went to Kent State on a partial scholarship as a quarterback. He was Hall-of-Fame linebacker Jack Lambert.

“No one had him on any recruiting services as being a great player,” Walker said. “I don’t know if Kent State beat anybody to get him.”

That story aside, the fact remains that the Cats have to fill positions vacated by players named Kustok, Anderson, Harris and Bentley, just to name a few. And on paper it seems that NU will likely struggle to do this with many members from its 2002 recruiting class.

But then again, there may be some surprises.