Iowa State signed 28 players to national letters of intent for the 2010 football season, coach Paul Rhoads announced Wednesday.

The team received commitments from seven three-star recruits and eight junior college transfers, according to ESPN.com’s Scouts, Inc.

Rivals.com showed Iowa State’s as the No. 59 recruiting class for 2010  — the best for Iowa State since 2005’s No. 58 class.

“We signed 28 kids. And our impression is that we signed 28 five-star kids, because we wanted them,” Rhoads said. “We evaluated them, we recruited them to be Iowa State Cyclones, and we had 28 kids that decided to become Iowa State Cyclones. In my mind we put together one heck of a class.”

Rhoads told the crowd of media, donors and members of the ISU athletic department that of the 32 players that came on official campus visits, 28 students signed — including 14 of the 15 students that came for visits on gamedays during the fall.

“I’ve been doing this for 21 years,” Rhoads said. “I’ve never been around a class with that highly successful percentage rate.”

Though this was Rhoads’ first time through a recruiting cycle as the coach at Iowa State, he has been a high-level recruiter at his stops in Pittsburgh and Auburn before arriving in Ames in December 2008.

For this class, the coach wanted to address the overall athleticism, speed and depth of the team, starting with a defense that returns just five starters.

Iowa State has begun to fill the vacated spots in the lineup by bringing in 12 players to the defense, including five defensive backs, four linebackers and three defensive linemen.

“I think we have athleticism and speed at every position group,” Rhoads said. “We needed it in every position group, and I think we addressed it fully with the 28.”

Much of the buzz surrounding the large class came from the offensive side of the ball and the playmakers Rhoads sought to bring in while on the recruiting trail.

While the six offensive line made the biggest splash in terms of depth, it’s the potential for immediate impact that the new skill position players provide that has Rhoads excited.

“They might not match everybody’s expectations, height, weight, speed and so forth, but you put the tape on and these guys can play,” he said.

At running back, Shontrelle Johnson — ranked as a three-star recruit by Scouts, Inc. — is a player that Rhoads called “special,” and could figure into a backfield that featured a 1,000-yard rusher in junior Alexander Robinson, now in need of a full-time backup after the departure of Jeremiah Schwartz.

“He has speed, he has strength,” Rhoads said about Johnson, the DeLand, Fla., native. “If we put on all 28 [highlight films], and put his highlight on last, he would, I promise you, get the most ooh’s and ahh’s over what he does.”

To supplement a passing game that struggled in 2009, Iowa State brought in three wide receivers and two tight ends, including three junior college  transfers: receivers Albert Gary and Chris Young and tight end Ricky Howard.

Rhoads said the need for explosive skill-position players on the offense comes from a lack of big plays from the offense in 2009.

“We’ve got guys with great hands, guys that have been productive for us, but we need to turn more 8-yard catches into 80-yard plays,” Rhoads said.

While most players’ routes to Iowa State were fairly normal, Gary’s is “a unique situation” and has his new coach excited.

Gary, originally a member of the recruiting class of 2008, signed with Arkansas directly out of high school but when he reported to fall camp, he failed to meet academic requirements for enrollment. The then-running back decided to take a year off from football before returning to Butler County Community College and redshirting for the 2009 season, making him a freshman for Iowa State in 2010.

“He’s two years removed from high school, which gives him great maturity and physical development, but we gain four years of eligibility out of him,” Rhoads said. “We think we’ve got a steal … Getting him right at the end, we believe, is a coup.”

With Gary are six more junior college transfers that Rhoads anticipates can make an immediate impact on the Cyclones’ two-deep depth chart heading into the summer and fall.

Three players — Howard, offensive lineman Jon Caspers and defensive back Anthony Young — have already enrolled for classes at Iowa State, leaving them eligible to participate in spring practice. Meanwhile, the other four will enroll for the summer and begin workouts for the 2010 season.

In 2009, safety David Sims came in as a junior college transfer from Butte Community College and made an immediate impact on the ISU defense. The ISU coaching staff hopes that the players they brought in from junior colleges can have a smilar impact as Sims in continuing the development of the program.

“The development that takes place from January to August, which includes the spring ball, teaching the fundamentals and technique, is vital to where we’re going,” Rhoads said. “We brought them all down because we think they can find a place in our two deep and contribute. We’ll just see if they can rise to that level.”

Rhoads’s class strayed far away from Iowa’s borders to find the next generation of ISU football, grabbing five players from California, seven from Texas and eight from Florida.

Those numbers speak to the improved speed and athleticism of the team, but also to the success the Cyclones had during 2009 increasing the recruiting base available to the coaching staff.

“Certainly the success we’ve had on the field with the seven wins, the 2009 football team never having a losing record and finishing up with an Insight Bowl championship, certainly helped enhance the finished product,” Rhoads said.

While 20 of the 28 commitments came from three of the most football-heavy states, five new Cyclones came from Iowa.

Defensive lineman Nick Kron and punter Kirby Van Der Kamp — the likely replacement for outgoing punter Mike Brandtner — come from West Des Moines Valley, while three-star defensive lineman Brandon Jensen comes from what Rhoads called “one of the most prestigious high schools in the state,” his alma mater Ankeny High.

The Iowa recruit that drew the most talk Wednesday, though, was Urbandale High’s Jevoury Wedderburn, a player that Rhoads described as a “running back/linebacker.”

“[Wedderburn is] somebody that we’ve had targeted all along,” Rhoads said. “The process just moved a little bit later with Jevoury, but we’re happy to have him in here. As a matter of fact, at 2:52 [p.m.], he just talked to me for the second time today to tell me how proud he was to be an Iowa State Cyclone.”

On the offensive line, Jacob Gannon will be coming in from Iowa City West, joining five other linemen from around the country to provide depth to a unit that lost just one starter from last season, Reggie Stephens.

Caspers, a transfer from North Dakota State College of Science, is one of the players to already enroll, but requested during the recruiting process to redshirt the 2010 season, something Rhoads said will allow him to develop even further in his short time in Ames.

While Caspers will redshirt next season, another junior college player will be making a slightly later arrival in Ames than he had hoped.

Defensive end Rony Nelson ended up one class short of meeting the academic requirements for enrollment before the spring semester, so he will finish the course online during the spring before enrolling for the summer, Rhoads told reporters.

Jared Barnett, a quarterback from Garland, Texas, will be another likely candidate for a redshirt this fall. The dual-threat will be listed behind Austen Arnaud (a senior for the 2010 season) and Jerome Tiller on the depth chart before fall camp.

However, Rhoads said Barnett possesses the skills to succeed in offensive coordinator Tom Herman’s wide-open offense.

“First of all, he’s a winner,” Rhoads said.” “He brings good intelligence to the position, he’s effective with his arm as well as his feet, and as you know by seeing how we play and how we want to play, both of those qualities are essential for success at the quarterback position.”

– Information from ESPN.com’s Scouts, Inc., rivals.com and cyclones.com was used in this report.