February 12 Notebook
February 12, 2007 04:59 PM | General
February 12, 2007
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Tony Gibson is going to get a first-hand look at more than a third of the 25 players West Virginia signed to NCAA letters-of-intent last Wednesday. Nine prospects were listed as defensive backs with a couple of more having the ability to move over to the secondary as well.
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| Rich Rodriguez signed nine defensive backs in West Virginia's 2008 football class.
All-Pro Photography/Dale Sparks |
“It’s not a condemnation of our current DBs, it’s more of an issue of we need more competition at every position,” said West Virginia coach Rich Rodriguez.
Gibson, WVU’s defensive backfield coach who now doubles as recruiting coordinator, says it’s purely coincidental that his first recruiting class has so many DBs in it.
“It was a big need coming in,” Gibson said. “Everybody knows we needed to get some depth and competition and light a fire under some guys. Hopefully it will be a fun summer camp.”
Naturally, the two junior college transfers Ellis Lankster and Tony Wood will get close looks. Lankster was a second-team JUCO All-American at Jones County (Miss.) Junior College who enrolled in January. Wood came on as a sophomore at Lackawanna (Pa.) College, where he had three interceptions and recorded 22 tackles.
Sidney Glover, a standout safety at Warren G. Harding High School, graduated a semester early and is already enrolled at WVU. He will be available to participate in spring drills.
All-Michigan safety Derrick Knight is an outstanding all-around athlete who has a reputation as a hard hitter. The same can be said for North Bergen (N.J.) High School standout Evan Rodriguez and Chaminade-Madonna (Fla.) Prep defensive back Eain Smith.
Keith Tandy of Hopkinsville, Ky., and Kendall Washington of Canton, Ohio, are versatile enough to play a number of positions in the secondary, as is Monsignor Bonner (Pa.) High product P.J. Shirden.
Athletes Brandon Hogan and Will Johnson could also wind up on the defensive side of the football, too.
“The goal of every Division I football program is to have competition at every position to elevate everybody’s play,” Rodriguez said. “We really felt we needed that, particularly at corner on our defense.”
Gibson says having a secondary class this big isn’t unusual.
“We did this three or four years ago when we signed a bunch of DBs and those guys are all seniors,” Gibson said. “Now it’s time for this class to come in and we’ll see what they can do.”
Signing Day Leftovers
“We’re pretty established in a lot of areas,” he said. “In Western and Eastern Pa Kirlav (Bill Kirelawich) and I have that covered. I’ve got West Virginia and I took over Youngstown this year. Bruce (Tall) has Ohio.
“We’re going to stay with the same places and the new guys (Rod Smith and Greg Frey) … if anything changes it will be with where they are familiar recruiting: Where they have their contacts and we’ll see what can help us get more players.”
Now six years into it Rodriguez says all of the parts are in place.
“When you are first taking over a program there are so many things that you have to put into place,” he said. “You probably don’t really know where you’re deep at with your own team. If you’re in a program for several years you know where you’re strengths and weaknesses are.
“Everybody makes mistakes in recruiting. For us it’s easily identifiable now. We feel that the program is in place so that the only people that have to learn how to do things the West Virginia football way are the people that we just signed.”
“It was a little extra work but what happens when you have three coaches leave you still have six plus myself as seven on the road. Well, guess what? That’s the NCAA limit on the road anyway. When a coach leaves, all of the sudden those young men he was recruiting falls to somebody else and that’s difficult to do because (the new) coach hasn’t had a chance to establish a relationship.”
Rodriguez cited Butch Jones’ approach in his recruitment of Derrick Knight and St. Petersburg standouts Jock Sanders and Andrew Harris.
“Those guys stayed with their commitment so obviously Butch sold them on the school,” Rodriguez said. “Calvin (Magee) took over a couple of guys and Bruce (Tall) took over a guy and they stayed committed to us. Butch did a good job of selling our program.”
“We feel we’re a national program and let’s face it, we have to be,” he said. “Our population base is so small that we have to be a national program. We’ve got to go into someone else’s backyard to fill most of our roster. We’ve had success with that over the years and we’re going to continue to have success with that.”
“We have an evaluation process where the guy that recruits that area has to approve them, the position coach has to approve them, the coordinators have to approve them and I have to approve them,” Rodriguez said. “I kind of like that process because everyone is involved.”
“I bet you if you asked any Big East coach today that wasn’t an issue at all in recruiting,” he said. “I think one time somebody mentioned that and the recruit laughed at him. For two or three years in a row we fought that hard – they’re not going to keep their BCS bid, the league is in trouble, blah, blah blah. Last year and this year I heard none of that.”
Actually, Rodriguez said it was the reverse.
“There are some leagues that say they are this and that and they’re going on history rather than the present,” he explained. “We always bring up the present when comparing that.”
“I organized the recruiting weekends and I had to be back in early on Fridays to get that done,” he said. “I’m sure over the next month and a half, two months, I will look back at what we can improve on as a staff and try and get a plan in place once it gets going.”
