I think you must have made the mistake of putting all of your eggs in a few baskets, i.e. you sank your recruiting dollars into a few guys and when you lost those battles you had no backup plan.
If you know all of this stuff already, that's fine, but I thought this may help:
Any time a battle comes up (a recruit is considering someone else besides just your school), you need to do an immediate evaluation as soon as you find that out. You want to know BEFOREHAND if the battle is even worth fighting.
You also have to know the player you're going after - is he really worth the battle, or can you find another similar player without battling?
You should be looking at MORE than just your prestige versus theirs. Some things to look at:
1. Distance for BOTH of you. I know you said you looked at this, but you need to be careful when doing it. The difference between a recruit at 10 miles away and 150 miles away isn't a lot, even for HVs (for example, I think it's $300 for an HV at 10 miles but just $350 or so at 150 miles - that's not a lot of money difference). Even when you get beyond the thresholds at 200 and 360 miles, there are considerations to be made, which brings me to:
2. Recruiting cash. You know what you have left at any given time, but you need to evaluate the other person's resources to see how much they might have. To do that , you must look at:
A. How many scholarships they have open. This is a big deal as you get money based on this. If you both have three open, you started fairly even. If he's got six open and you only had three, he started with a lot more than you.
B. How many guys does he have signed and/or considering him without any competition for them (meaning they will sign unless someone else comes along)? If he has three open scholarships and has signed two guys already, you know the rest of his budget (whatever is left) can be thrown at beating you.
C. How many other battles is he in? If he's got three open scholarships and is fighting someone for three separate recruits, it's the opposite of the last situation - he may not have the funds to fight you.
D. Remember to look at WOTS when checking his battles - is he leading or behind? If he's leading, he may not have to expend much more there depending upon what the other people in that battle do. If he's behind, then he'll have to spend if he wants to win, meaning he'll have less to fight you.