UW Class of 2014 Recruiting Thread

[RegentDenali]

And we are off. I won't be able to update this all morning as I worked late and got lots going on today, but one interesting thing said by Greg Bell this morning whose managing the chat today for UW NSD.

When asked about potential flips of our verbals or late surprises: :"perhaps one or two -- but a couple potential late gains, as well. the net is expected to be about two dozen"



Guess we won't know for sure till the press conference at 3pm. Interesting.........

But as of 7:30, we did have some faxes arrive.

Drew Lewis
Jomon Dotson
Greg Gaines
Jaylen Johnson
Drew Sample
KJ Carta - Samuels
JoJo McIntosh
Jaimie Bryant

 

[RegentDenali]

Sidney Jones

 

[RegentDenali]

Shane Bowman
Tristan Vizcaino
Darren Gardenhire

50 minutes into NSD for UW and about half our recruits have already faxed. They want to be Dawgs bad!!!

Some of them have set up official announcements and projected fax times later this morning because of school stuff, etc... But great to see soo many already in.

 

[RegentDenali]

Dante Pettis
Matt James
Budda Baker
Jesse Sosebee
Kaleb McGary

 

[RegentDenali]

Pick from the UW FOC this morning as the faxes are arriving and communications are going in and out.

 

[RegentDenali]

Brandon Lewis

Wow. The majority of the class is already in by 8:20. Awesome.

 

[RegentDenali]

 

[RegentDenali]

8:45 and only 4 of the current verbals are left to send their faxes.

Naijiel Hale
Lavon Washington
John Turner
Will Dissly

Plus their may be 1 or 2 late surprises, but Brayden Lenius is probably one of them.

 

[RegentDenali]

RB Tre Watson, who might of been one of those late flips to UW, has stuck with his commit to Cal. Not surprising.

 

[RegentDenali]

Naijiel Hale fax is in. Boom.

 

[RegentDenali]

Max Richmond (RB,DB), Bellevue H.S. has committed to UW as a preferred walk-on.

 

[RegentDenali]

Will Dissly

 

[mcnabb7542]

Well we had a strong idea of what was coming in and there hasn't been any runaways, so all in all I think this has been an awesome day, month and half, and to be honest that's a hell of a hall, this staff came in guns blazing and really put a very strong class together....

 

[WizardHawk]

 

[seahawksfan234]

So any surprising last minute flips? Any surprises or is the class what we expected?

 

[Dragon]

UW is Wisconsin bro. Get your shit together.

 

[RegentDenali]

No surprises.

All the verbals signed.

Brayden Lenius signed as predicted.
Devin Burleson signed. He's an interesting project. May become a dual sport player with BBall as well.

Greg Bell who provided most of the updates from the school today mentioned how systematic everything ran today. Everything went according as planned.

 

[seahawksfan234]

No surprises.

All the verbals signed.

Brayden Lenius signed as predicted.
Devin Burleson signed. He's an interesting project. May become a dual sport player with BBall as well.

Greg Bell who provided most of the updates from the school today mentioned how systematic everything ran today. Everything went according as planned.

Any relation to Nate Burleson? I know Burleson went to O'Dea so that is why I was wondering.

 

[RegentDenali]

Any relation to Nate Burleson? I know Burleson went to O'Dea so that is why I was wondering.

Don't believe they are related. Devin is from Palmdale, CA.

Appears the consensus from most draft sites is Petersen closed really strong given a very tough situation and giving the class a solid B grade .

Good deal. Go Dawgs!!!

 

[RegentDenali]

Some final thoughts on this class:

We're definitely seeing the change of culture between a typical Sark staff vs. Petersen staff during recruiting. There was no doubt that Sark was a good salesman and pulled in some solid PAC quality classes, but you can see that the new regime keeps things more private and quiet. Petersen won't be using a personal twitter account for woofs and communications about commits, etc..., so it's left up to the assistants and coordinators to communicate in that manner. He's the walk silently and carry a big stick kind of guy. That's just fine for UW.

It also appears that instead of expecting recruits to commit on the spot, they tell them to go back home, think about it, and then they'll follow up.

One big advantage is the new facilities and stadium. Petersen seems to have been repeating over the last month that the facilities made the sales pitch much easier and they really speak for themselves.

We expected Keith Bhonapha as recruiting coordinator to be going to work, but it appears Jimmy Lake is very impressive at it as well. These guys really are used to pounding the pavement hard all over the west coast, Hawaii, and locations east as well. Think that really benefited us with this class because they were able to pull together an impressive class in a month. Just imagine what these guys can do with a year and they are already getting started on the 2015 class.

The class ends up ranked in the 30s nationally and 7th in the PAC.

And the class:

What we found out is that once the d coordinator and coaches were in, their analysis was that we needed a maxed out db class. I guess they saw some problems on the horizon with the current team and made sure the class made it one of their top priorities. We took 6 DBs in this class, including Baker and Hale who will most likely be out there this fall getting playing time. Coach Lake ended up with the best DB class of the PAC and shows he can recruit with the best of them.

We also took in a lot of beef for the D and O lines. We knew O line was a critical need for this class. But we also landed some really impressive recruits for the Dline as well.

While the future for Kaleb McGary yells LT, part of the reason we landed him is he still wants to persue Dline as well and Petersen and the coaches are going to allow it. Given that we have a nice set of Jrs and Srs on the Oline in 2014, this provides some time for McGary to find his sweet spot.

KJ was a tremendous gift that feel perfectly into our laps. But I still think he's raw and I don't think he'll be able to seriously challenge for the starting job this fall, with the other roster of QBs we currently have. Never say never, but he's a big key to the future.

And another important one. Washington landed #1 and #2 players from the state this year. While there is talent every where and California will always be important, it's critical to always get the best from this state that's the right OKGs for UW.

We also were able to maintain the class once we got the verbals. No late flips to other schools, even though interest was there from many other schools for members of this class.

Noticeable improvement in the presence of this staff around the local schools. The pipeline at Bellevue H.S. and other Wash schools has been quickly improved and that attention will pay off bigtime down the road.