Less than 48 hours until Signing Day, and it definitely feels like the countdown is on. Let’s look at everything going on with Pitt’s recruiting class heading toward the (first) finish line.
- We’ll begin with the weekend that was. Pitt had four official visitors and got four commitments. That’s an easy one to draw a line through, and to be honest, it was fairly expected; I think we all had a pretty good idea of the status with each of the four visitors heading into the weekend, and everything went as planned.
- The first announced commitment was Penn State transfer Christian Veilleux. As we’ve laid out for the last two weeks, there were three priorities for offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti this offseason:
Get a veteran transfer to be the starter in 2023. Get a younger transfer to learn the offense over the next year in advance of being the starter in 2024. And get a high school prospect to grow and develop.
Boston College transfer Phil Jurkovec filled the first need and Agoura (Calif.) prospect Ty Dieffenbach filled the second one. That just left the “young transfer” spot, and Cignetti identified Veilleux as the top target there pretty early in the process (which is to say, early in the last two weeks).
Veilleux fits the bill pretty well. He spent two years at Penn State, so he has been around college football enough to understand what it takes to play at this level: the speed of the game, the work that has to be put in and simply what it’s like to be a student-athlete. I think there’s value in that.
And while Veilleux doesn’t have a lot of on-field time in his college career - 79 total snaps, 35 pass attempts - he does have a game against Rutgers in 2021 that stands out. When starter Sean Clifford left in the first quarter with the flu, Veilleux stepped in and shined, completing 15-of-24 for 235 yards and three touchdown passes.
So you’ve got a young quarterback (three years of eligibility remaining) with a good pedigree (his offer list was impressive) and a strong showing in his limited sample size of playing time. There might be better quarterbacks in the portal this offseason, but Veilleux seems to fit what Pitt needs pretty well.
- The next announced commitment came from Israel Polk. A three-star receiver prospect at national powerhouse St. John Bosco in Bellflower (Calif.), Polk committed at the end of a whirlwind recruitment of less than a week.
That’s not an exaggeration. Ty Dieffenbach’s quarterback coach brought up Polk during a conversation with the Pitt staff last week. I believe that was Tuesday. By Thursday, Polk had an offer from Pitt. By Friday, he was in Pittsburgh for an official visit. And by Sunday, he was committed.
By the time he signs on Wednesday, Polk will have been on Pitt’s recruiting board for roughly eight or nine days.
Sometimes things happen fast in recruiting.
I think Polk looks like he’s worth a late-cycle chance. According to MaxPreps, he was St. John Bosco’s leading receiver, posting a few more catches than his teammate, four-star Louisville commit Deandre Moore. He also matched Moore with eight receiving touchdowns and played a fairly big role in the Braves’ march to a state championship and No. 1 spot in the USA Today Sports Super 25 ranking of high school football teams.
- Veilleux and Polk are two of the four commitments, and it doesn’t take much deductive reasoning to figure out that the other two are also the other two recruits who visited this weekend:
West Palm Beach (Fla.) Cardinal Newman defensive end Maverick Gracio and Steel Valley defensive back Cruce Brookins.
We’ve written a lot about both of those guys over the last two weeks, especially leading into their visits, so we don’t need to recount too much here. But I’ll point out two things. One is that I get the impression the Pitt staff believes Brookins can follow in the footsteps of some of Pitt’s other successful WPIAL defensive backs - guys like Dane Jackson, Damar Hamlin and M.J. Devonshire. They think he’s got that kind of ceiling.
The other thing to point out is that Gracio allowed Charlie Partridge to offer perhaps the greatest commitment-hint tweet ever:
- Moving on, we’re tracking two more areas: other transfer candidates and the existing recruiting class.
- On the transfer front, Indiana tight end AJ Barner was at Pitt yesterday after visiting Michigan the day before. I have heard from one source that he is likely to make his commitment today. That same source also indicated that Michigan is the likely winner here.
I think Pitt was in front from the time Barner went into the transfer portal, but a somewhat recent push from Michigan seems to have changed the order. I’m not ruling out the Panthers as a landing spot for Barner; I’ve heard that his visit yesterday went well, and that was his second visit to Pitt in four days, as he also stopped in the South Side on Thursday morning. So there’s legitimate interest and the Panthers have a chance, but it feels like they probably won’t get Barner. We’ll see what develops.
- There’s also UNLV receiver Kyle Williams. He was hoping to take an official visit to Pitt this past weekend but was unable to do so due to a transcript issue. I’m not sure if that issue will cause a delay in his transferring, but some paperwork does have to be in order just to take a visit, and that’s apparently what Williams ran into.
While he couldn’t visit in-person, Williams did have a FaceTime session Friday night with Frank Cignetti and Tiquan Underwood, so he had a chance to get to know those coaches a little better. I’m still reaching out to a few sources, but I get the impression that Pitt has a really good shot here.
- Speaking of transfer receivers, I continue to hear that Kent State’s Dante Cephas is most likely not going to end up transferring. He pretty quickly became one of the top receivers in the transfer portal, but some academic issues appear to be holding him back from actually transferring anywhere. Whether that means he goes back to Kent State or tries the NFL, I don't know. But it sounds like there are some things that will prevent him from transferring anywhere. We'll see what happens there.
Continued...
- We’ll begin with the weekend that was. Pitt had four official visitors and got four commitments. That’s an easy one to draw a line through, and to be honest, it was fairly expected; I think we all had a pretty good idea of the status with each of the four visitors heading into the weekend, and everything went as planned.
- The first announced commitment was Penn State transfer Christian Veilleux. As we’ve laid out for the last two weeks, there were three priorities for offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti this offseason:
Get a veteran transfer to be the starter in 2023. Get a younger transfer to learn the offense over the next year in advance of being the starter in 2024. And get a high school prospect to grow and develop.
Boston College transfer Phil Jurkovec filled the first need and Agoura (Calif.) prospect Ty Dieffenbach filled the second one. That just left the “young transfer” spot, and Cignetti identified Veilleux as the top target there pretty early in the process (which is to say, early in the last two weeks).
Veilleux fits the bill pretty well. He spent two years at Penn State, so he has been around college football enough to understand what it takes to play at this level: the speed of the game, the work that has to be put in and simply what it’s like to be a student-athlete. I think there’s value in that.
And while Veilleux doesn’t have a lot of on-field time in his college career - 79 total snaps, 35 pass attempts - he does have a game against Rutgers in 2021 that stands out. When starter Sean Clifford left in the first quarter with the flu, Veilleux stepped in and shined, completing 15-of-24 for 235 yards and three touchdown passes.
So you’ve got a young quarterback (three years of eligibility remaining) with a good pedigree (his offer list was impressive) and a strong showing in his limited sample size of playing time. There might be better quarterbacks in the portal this offseason, but Veilleux seems to fit what Pitt needs pretty well.
- The next announced commitment came from Israel Polk. A three-star receiver prospect at national powerhouse St. John Bosco in Bellflower (Calif.), Polk committed at the end of a whirlwind recruitment of less than a week.
That’s not an exaggeration. Ty Dieffenbach’s quarterback coach brought up Polk during a conversation with the Pitt staff last week. I believe that was Tuesday. By Thursday, Polk had an offer from Pitt. By Friday, he was in Pittsburgh for an official visit. And by Sunday, he was committed.
By the time he signs on Wednesday, Polk will have been on Pitt’s recruiting board for roughly eight or nine days.
Sometimes things happen fast in recruiting.
I think Polk looks like he’s worth a late-cycle chance. According to MaxPreps, he was St. John Bosco’s leading receiver, posting a few more catches than his teammate, four-star Louisville commit Deandre Moore. He also matched Moore with eight receiving touchdowns and played a fairly big role in the Braves’ march to a state championship and No. 1 spot in the USA Today Sports Super 25 ranking of high school football teams.
- Veilleux and Polk are two of the four commitments, and it doesn’t take much deductive reasoning to figure out that the other two are also the other two recruits who visited this weekend:
West Palm Beach (Fla.) Cardinal Newman defensive end Maverick Gracio and Steel Valley defensive back Cruce Brookins.
We’ve written a lot about both of those guys over the last two weeks, especially leading into their visits, so we don’t need to recount too much here. But I’ll point out two things. One is that I get the impression the Pitt staff believes Brookins can follow in the footsteps of some of Pitt’s other successful WPIAL defensive backs - guys like Dane Jackson, Damar Hamlin and M.J. Devonshire. They think he’s got that kind of ceiling.
The other thing to point out is that Gracio allowed Charlie Partridge to offer perhaps the greatest commitment-hint tweet ever:
- Moving on, we’re tracking two more areas: other transfer candidates and the existing recruiting class.
- On the transfer front, Indiana tight end AJ Barner was at Pitt yesterday after visiting Michigan the day before. I have heard from one source that he is likely to make his commitment today. That same source also indicated that Michigan is the likely winner here.
I think Pitt was in front from the time Barner went into the transfer portal, but a somewhat recent push from Michigan seems to have changed the order. I’m not ruling out the Panthers as a landing spot for Barner; I’ve heard that his visit yesterday went well, and that was his second visit to Pitt in four days, as he also stopped in the South Side on Thursday morning. So there’s legitimate interest and the Panthers have a chance, but it feels like they probably won’t get Barner. We’ll see what develops.
- There’s also UNLV receiver Kyle Williams. He was hoping to take an official visit to Pitt this past weekend but was unable to do so due to a transcript issue. I’m not sure if that issue will cause a delay in his transferring, but some paperwork does have to be in order just to take a visit, and that’s apparently what Williams ran into.
While he couldn’t visit in-person, Williams did have a FaceTime session Friday night with Frank Cignetti and Tiquan Underwood, so he had a chance to get to know those coaches a little better. I’m still reaching out to a few sources, but I get the impression that Pitt has a really good shot here.
- Speaking of transfer receivers, I continue to hear that Kent State’s Dante Cephas is most likely not going to end up transferring. He pretty quickly became one of the top receivers in the transfer portal, but some academic issues appear to be holding him back from actually transferring anywhere. Whether that means he goes back to Kent State or tries the NFL, I don't know. But it sounds like there are some things that will prevent him from transferring anywhere. We'll see what happens there.
Continued...
