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WVU Has Experienced Success With JC Transfers
December 19, 2016 08:43 AM | Football
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. - West Virginia’s decision to recruit junior college players is a lot like riding a tiger. It can be thrilling and can get you somewhere quickly, but it’s also very difficult to jump off.
Numerous success stories can be readily recited, though.
This year, senior corner Rasul Douglas leads the country in interceptions and has been named to several All-America teams. He was a junior college transfer.
Wide receivers Kevin White, a former No. 1 pick, and Mario Alford now draw NFL paychecks following productive, two-year careers at WVU, while Mark Glowinski is now a starting offensive guard for the Seattle Seahawks.
These guys were JC transfers, too.
Before them, pass rushing specialist Bruce Irvin parlayed his 23 sacks in two seasons at WVU into a lucrative professional football career with the Seattle Seahawks and now the Oakland Raiders.
All of these guys helped the Mountaineers win a lot of football games.
The key to having a successful junior college recruiting program is sticking to it, because once you start recruiting junior college players, it’s difficult to stop.
This year, the Mountaineers have already added seven JC transfers to their roster at mid-semester, including four on defense - Iowa Western Community College corner Hakeem Bailey, Northwest Mississippi Community College defensive lineman Jalen Harvey, Northwest Mississippi Community College linebacker Quondarius Qualls and East Mississippi Community College defensive lineman Ezekiel Rose.
“I’m comfortable with it because we’ve had success with them the last couple of years,” West Virginia defensive coordinator Tony Gibson said. “We have to make sure we keep this thing going because it’s hard to go back. Once you get a guy and he has experience and you have success with him, it’s hard to go back to the high school guys all the time.”
The most advantageous time to bring junior college players into your program is at mid-semester because they will be able to participate in spring practice.
Those 15 spring practices plus the developmental season are basically like having another year in the program.
Douglas explains.
“Last year, I didn’t have anything. I just came in and played football and that didn’t get me where I needed to be,” he said. “If I would have been here for the spring, I would have been ready, but if you come in August 20, or something like that, it’s going to take you a year.”
Which is exactly what happened with Douglas.
“The spring definitely felt like a season, so my last year’s season was my spring and this year was my senior season,” he explained. “Spring is just a lot of reps. In the scrimmages you get about 100 plays so you see the field and get a chance to mess up and see what you are doing wrong. You are not going against a real team so when you lose and you watch film it’s not so bad.”
Once Douglas signed with West Virginia in February, his only football-related activity until the time he arrived on campus was making sure his academics were in order to graduate from junior college.
“I talked to (former secondary coach Brian Mitchell) maybe once a week,” Douglas recalled. “He would call me or send me a text and check up on me, but it was mostly school. Every time I came up here thinking I had the grades all figured out they sent me right back, ‘No, you’ve got a couple more classes you need to take.’ I just put everything into my school work.”
Consequently, Douglas was playing catchup from the moment he came to West Virginia.
Naturally, that will not be the case with the seven players the Mountaineers are bringing in at mid-term. They are already cleared academically, and the planning for the coaching staff becomes more secure now because these guys have been admitted to school and will be a part of the team instead of having to wait until the summertime to see if they can make it.
“You are getting those guys and you know they are going to be locked in and to be able to have those guys for 15 practices in the spring and the offseason working out is going to be good for us,” Gibson admitted.
However, Gibson said it is important that their recruiting classes remain balanced with the right number of junior college transfers and high school players to even things out across the board.
You don’t want to be too top heavy or too bottom heavy in terms of classes.
“We have to do a great job of having a mixture of the two,” he said. “We can’t go all out one way or the other. Right now we have a great plan. (Director of Player Personnel) Ryan Dorchester has a great plan of how to attack this thing in recruiting with our position of needs and where we need those guys to fit in.”
That means this year, it was determined that some older players were needed to balance things out.
“This senior class coming up next year is going to be a small one compared to what we’ve had,” Gibson explained. “If we add some graduate transfers, that may add to our numbers, but right now looking at it our numbers aren’t real big in this senior class coming up.”
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