From the desk of Jim Snyder
Rivals Day
There will be a Rivals Day at the University of Akron on March 25th. If you know someone that is a legitimate Division 1 prospect that would like to go they should e-mail recruiting@rivals.com.
This is a classroom session on the recruiting process. There will be no workouts. Street clothes only.
Nike Combines
Student Sports will hold Nike combines at 17 locations around the country. These will be used to test athletes. Timing and testing will be done in the 40-dash ect. Here are the closest Nike combines.
February 25th Cleveland (Pinnacle Sports complex)
March 10th Baltimore (Ravens complex)
April 7th NY/NJ Metro (TBA)
April 15th Columbus (Capital University)
If you know an athlete that would like to be tested see the Nike post at the top of this message board.
Nike Training camps
Additionally Student Sports will hold Nike Training Sessions at 12 locations. These are by invitation only. The player must test well at the combine or> have the recommendation of his high school coach. No testing will be done at the Training Camps. Generally these run from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. The dates are shown below:
April 1st University of Miami
April 15th Southern Cal
April 21st Georgia
April 22nd Florida State
April 28th Texas Christian
May 5th Purdue
May 12th Penn State
May 13th Rutgers
May 19th Stanford
June 1st Missouri
June 2nd Colorado
June 9th Oregon
Signing day roundup
Rivals.com set a record of nearly 75 million pages views on Letter of Intent day. There was no down time and only a few delays. This is the best I can remember response time on these record setting days. They had a 29% increase in volume over last year. Congratulations to the technical staff. They have had a lot thrown at them this year. There were over 317,000 video down loads. Their goal is to dramatically grow this number in future years.
The football schedule and spring camp
If you look Pitt’s schedule over the next few years you will see this is a notch year. The home schedule gets better once Notre Dame rejoins the schedule and Iowa, Miami, Clemson and NC State start showing up. Navy and South Florida are capable of giving Pitt a tough game but might lack the star power of some other BCS teams.
Next year Pitt opens at home with Eastern Michigan and Grambling. The coaching staff will have to find a new quarterback and rebuild the linebacking corps. There figures to be a lot of first and second year players on the two-deep chart this fall. No one at Pitt was eager to play a killer of a game early and I can’t blame them. Leading off with this pair almost extends fall camp by two weeks.
The word is that Dorin Dickerson will get a very long look at running back in the spring practice. He will need to step up and show he can do it. This fall Pitt brings in LeSean McCoy, Greg Williams, Henry Hynoski and Shariff Harris. They will join LaRod Stephens-Howling, Kevin Collier and Conredge Collins. It will get awful crowded at running back in the fall and Dickerson will need to show he can break the two-deep chart at running back or the Pitt coaches will need to find a new home for him. It will be one of many mini-dramas that will be played out in spring camp next month. It should be a lot of fun.
Coach Wannstedt will take the Panthers to spring camp in March. There are several areas to watch. They must find a replacement for Tyler Palko at quarterback. Bill Stull figures to be the leader going in but we expect Kevin Smith to give him a serious challenge.Pat Bostick will join the mix this summer. Bostick has already graduated from high school. We expect him to be in virtually every classroom session this spring to get a jump start.
Paul Rhoads has taken over as linebacker coach and he has his work cut out for him. He must find replacements for H.B. Blades, Clint Sessions and Brian Bennett. Second year players Greg Webster and Nate Nix will need to step up. It will make an interest spring session and the Pantherlair will be there keeping you up to date.
Some hoops talk
Pitt is now 21-3 overall and 9-1 in the Big East. It is their best start in conference play in the 25 years they have been in the Big East Conference. Sam Young’s play at West Virginia was very encouraging. Pitt can score inside with Aaron Gray and they can score from the perimeter with Ronald Ramon, Levance Fields and Antonio Graves. Sam Young gives them a forward capable of burning other teams. When he is on his game he makes Pitt very tough to defend.
Pitt has now won 4 games in a row since the overtime loss to Marquette. They play their next three at home before traveling to Seton Hall. It is not too difficult to imagine the Panthers winning the next 4 to go 25-3. Sitting near the end of the regular season are road trips to Georgetown and Marquette. The Big East Conference race figures to be decided on the road. Seedings for the Big East tournament could hang on these games. Both games will be televised nationally.
Pitt is now ranked No. 3 in the RPI rankings. In theory this could give Pitt a No. 1 seed. My guess is that the Panthers will have to win out for that to happen. UCLA, North Carolina, Florida and the Big Ten winner figure to grab the top four slots. If the Panthers are to break into this group they will need to win out going down the stretch. They might.
This weekend Marquette travels to Georgetown on Saturday for a Noon game on ESPN. The winner will be in second place in the Big East and the team for Pitt to beat coming down the stretch.
Who figured the Dukes would get hot and help the Panthers’ RPI ranking?
Football recruiting roundup
Things we hope you saw. We had a nice picture of Tommie Duhart signing his Letter of Intent at Coffeyville CC. The folks that publish the Rutgers site had some good photos of Pitt commit Shariff Harrisand his teammate Will “The Thrill" Hill working out together at a sports complex in New Jersey. They sent us copies so we could do our own slide show but theirs was fine. We have pinned photos of Tommie Duhart and Shariff Harris at the top of the Between Fifth & Forbes Board. We will leave them there for a couple of days to insure everyone has had a chance to see them.
For the second year in a row Rivals.com has Pitt ranked in the Top 25 in the nation. For the second year in a row Pitt has the No. 1 class in the Big East (and it is not that close). This means for the past three years under Coach Wannstedt Pitt has been No. 2, No. 1 and No. 1 in the Big East Conference in recruiting rankings.
Over the past two years Pitt has been 6-8 on the football field in Big East games and has been out of the bowl picture despite the fact the conference has five bowl slots for only eight teams. We are getting close to the time that Pitt has to start moving back up in the Big East standings. It may not come as fast as we would like. Every team in the Big East Conference returns their quarterback but Pitt. West Virginia, Louisville and West Virginia all figure to be nationally ranked to open the 2007 season. South Florida is coming off a 9-4 year. The Bulls return most of their players plus an outstanding young quarterback. USF could be sitting just outside the Top 25. The Bulls signed running back Mike Ford. If he is the real deal they might leap frog the three favorites. They were competitive last year without much of a running game. These four figure to be voted in the first four slots in the Big East in preseason. Hopefully all these high recruiting rankings mean Pitt starts to show signs of moving up on the field in 2007. I think they will. The big question might be when?
I am sure the folks at Rival.com try to build a mathematical mode that works but a number of schools signed far more than the 25 recruits you are allowed. It is hard on math models. Obviously many will not qualify. These rankings are restated in August once they know who really showed up at fall practice. Here are a few that obviously are signing kids they know won’t make it. Tennessee-32, South Carolina-31, Auburn-30, Kansas State-34, Mississippi State-34 and Oregon State-34 are all way over the limit.
We were talking to Coach Ken Salem at Johnstown Bishop McCort. He told us that few recruiters were looking at defensive tackle Wayne Jones prior to his season but he lost weight last summer working out with his stepbrothers. He took football more seriously this year. He said that Wayne Jones was as good this year as any defensive player he has seen in the Johnstown area in a very long time. After Wayne had committed and signed a Letter of Intent he called me. I told him to bring his tight end (Mike Cruz) along with him. He laughed and said he was working on it.
Coach Salem felt Buddy Morris would do wonders for Wayne. Coach Salem said Pitt’s best recruit this year was Buddy Morrisso we are giving Buddy five-stars. I hope you got to see Panther Weekly this past week. They featured Buddy Morris. Good stuff! He has a reputation of working players very hard but still trying to put a little fun it.
Rivals.com has released their Top 100 juniors for 2008. There are several players of local interest on the list. Pitt will offer all of them. Landing them will not be easy. They should all be heavily recruited. Aliquippa football coach Matt Zmijanac was quoted this week as saying only the University of Beirut has failed to offer Jonathan Baldwin.
1) Jonathan Baldwin-WR-Aliquippa- His father played for Pitt
2) Brandon Beachum-LB-Youngstown Cardinal Mooney- He has been to Pitt a couple of times
3) Averin Collier-Ath-Rochester-His brother plays for Pitt
4) Josh Haden-Ath-Maryland-His brother went to Florida
5) Shayne Hale-LB-Gateway-Played with Pitt’s Aaron Smith
6) Will Hill-QB-St Peter’s -Teammate of Pitt’s Shariff Harris
7) Jared Holly-DB Easton
8) David Posluzny-LB-Hopewell-His brother played for Penn State
9) Terrelle Pryor-QB-Jeannette-No. 1 player in the country-He committed to Pitt last year
10) J.B. Shugarts-OL-His father played for IUP-He has visited Pitt
.
Last February Jeannette’s Terrelle Pryor attended the Pitt-Marquette basketball game at the Pete. A colleague told me there was a rumor that day at the Pete that Pryor had committed to Pitt. I called him and did an interview on him committing to Pitt. Who knows? He committed to Pitt once. Maybe he will do it a second time before it is all over.
There has been a ton of video crossing the Ticker on Terrelle Pryor this week. If you only have time to watch one please check out the video in which Rivals.com interviews him. You get to see him tell you where he stands and which sport he will play in his own words.
Montour LB/RB Christian Wilson continues to explode after a workout at the U.S. Army combine in San Antonio. He now has 17 offers. His new top eight are Auburn, Clemson, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio State, Pitt, Virginia Tech and Wisconsin. Schools that could be dropping out early include NC State, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan State.
We talked briefly to LeSean McCoy on Letter of Intent Day. He has often been tough to interview in recent months. Unfortunately I had to hang up on him to try and find out was going on at the Jabaal Sheard press conference. I explained and then he was rooting hard for Pitt to land him. He said he now weighs approximately 210 pounds if he is right he is not a real small back.
McCoy did say that he took a very heavy course load last fall and that he was only taking four courses in the spring semester. He plans to enroll at Pitt immediately after completing his courses in May. He is fired up and ready to go. Coach Dave Wannstedt was quoted this week as saying he will qualify. The light load this semester suggests this statement is on target.
Defensive end Jabaal Sheard announced at a press conference that he was going to Pitt at 11:00 am and signed a Letter of Intent with Pitt. He then delayed by several hours faxing the documents to Pitt as he was having second thoughts. I spoke to him minutes after he faxed the documents to Pitt. I congratulated him and he replied, “I don’t know. Arizona State sounded awfully good.” Coach Dave Wannstedt has a reputation of recruiting the mother very hard. I may be reading between the lines but I think Pitt got an assist from mom on this one.
Last week in the War Room I indicated we had heard Xavier Stinson was going to be an academic casualty. We knew at the time he was not coming to Pitt we just we not sure how fast the story would come out. It broke the following day. We did not think he would ever sign a Letter on Intent with Pitt. Not sure what happened but my guess is he simply had too high a jump in his ACT score. This will often cause eyebrows to go up.
Pitt will hold a Junior Day next weekend when the Pitt basketball team hosts Washington. Coach Wannstedt indicated he hopes to have 70 juniors in attendance. Most of these players will come from within driving distance of the Pitt campus because they have to pay their own way for this unofficial visit.
If you were following our Letter of Intent Day coverage you now know that we expect the following players to be invited walk-ons at Pitt although I am sure there will be others. They are all now in the database.
Chaz Alecxih DE (6’ 5” 230) Penn Manor
Andrew Janocko QB (6’ 0: 173) Clearfield
Jeff Stewart QB (6’ 3” 195) Bethel Park
The War Room is targeted towards our premium customers. We ask that all information reported in the War Room MUST stay right here! That’s the way this deal works. When this information is repeated outside of the Between Fifth and Forbes forum it only cheapens the price of yours and every other die-hard who have purchased premium services. The War Room is one of our more popular features...thank you all for keeping the information on this board.
Rivals Day
There will be a Rivals Day at the University of Akron on March 25th. If you know someone that is a legitimate Division 1 prospect that would like to go they should e-mail recruiting@rivals.com.
This is a classroom session on the recruiting process. There will be no workouts. Street clothes only.
Nike Combines
Student Sports will hold Nike combines at 17 locations around the country. These will be used to test athletes. Timing and testing will be done in the 40-dash ect. Here are the closest Nike combines.
February 25th Cleveland (Pinnacle Sports complex)
March 10th Baltimore (Ravens complex)
April 7th NY/NJ Metro (TBA)
April 15th Columbus (Capital University)
If you know an athlete that would like to be tested see the Nike post at the top of this message board.
Nike Training camps
Additionally Student Sports will hold Nike Training Sessions at 12 locations. These are by invitation only. The player must test well at the combine or> have the recommendation of his high school coach. No testing will be done at the Training Camps. Generally these run from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. The dates are shown below:
April 1st University of Miami
April 15th Southern Cal
April 21st Georgia
April 22nd Florida State
April 28th Texas Christian
May 5th Purdue
May 12th Penn State
May 13th Rutgers
May 19th Stanford
June 1st Missouri
June 2nd Colorado
June 9th Oregon
Signing day roundup
Rivals.com set a record of nearly 75 million pages views on Letter of Intent day. There was no down time and only a few delays. This is the best I can remember response time on these record setting days. They had a 29% increase in volume over last year. Congratulations to the technical staff. They have had a lot thrown at them this year. There were over 317,000 video down loads. Their goal is to dramatically grow this number in future years.
The football schedule and spring camp
If you look Pitt’s schedule over the next few years you will see this is a notch year. The home schedule gets better once Notre Dame rejoins the schedule and Iowa, Miami, Clemson and NC State start showing up. Navy and South Florida are capable of giving Pitt a tough game but might lack the star power of some other BCS teams.
Next year Pitt opens at home with Eastern Michigan and Grambling. The coaching staff will have to find a new quarterback and rebuild the linebacking corps. There figures to be a lot of first and second year players on the two-deep chart this fall. No one at Pitt was eager to play a killer of a game early and I can’t blame them. Leading off with this pair almost extends fall camp by two weeks.
The word is that Dorin Dickerson will get a very long look at running back in the spring practice. He will need to step up and show he can do it. This fall Pitt brings in LeSean McCoy, Greg Williams, Henry Hynoski and Shariff Harris. They will join LaRod Stephens-Howling, Kevin Collier and Conredge Collins. It will get awful crowded at running back in the fall and Dickerson will need to show he can break the two-deep chart at running back or the Pitt coaches will need to find a new home for him. It will be one of many mini-dramas that will be played out in spring camp next month. It should be a lot of fun.
Coach Wannstedt will take the Panthers to spring camp in March. There are several areas to watch. They must find a replacement for Tyler Palko at quarterback. Bill Stull figures to be the leader going in but we expect Kevin Smith to give him a serious challenge.Pat Bostick will join the mix this summer. Bostick has already graduated from high school. We expect him to be in virtually every classroom session this spring to get a jump start.
Paul Rhoads has taken over as linebacker coach and he has his work cut out for him. He must find replacements for H.B. Blades, Clint Sessions and Brian Bennett. Second year players Greg Webster and Nate Nix will need to step up. It will make an interest spring session and the Pantherlair will be there keeping you up to date.
Some hoops talk
Pitt is now 21-3 overall and 9-1 in the Big East. It is their best start in conference play in the 25 years they have been in the Big East Conference. Sam Young’s play at West Virginia was very encouraging. Pitt can score inside with Aaron Gray and they can score from the perimeter with Ronald Ramon, Levance Fields and Antonio Graves. Sam Young gives them a forward capable of burning other teams. When he is on his game he makes Pitt very tough to defend.
Pitt has now won 4 games in a row since the overtime loss to Marquette. They play their next three at home before traveling to Seton Hall. It is not too difficult to imagine the Panthers winning the next 4 to go 25-3. Sitting near the end of the regular season are road trips to Georgetown and Marquette. The Big East Conference race figures to be decided on the road. Seedings for the Big East tournament could hang on these games. Both games will be televised nationally.
Pitt is now ranked No. 3 in the RPI rankings. In theory this could give Pitt a No. 1 seed. My guess is that the Panthers will have to win out for that to happen. UCLA, North Carolina, Florida and the Big Ten winner figure to grab the top four slots. If the Panthers are to break into this group they will need to win out going down the stretch. They might.
This weekend Marquette travels to Georgetown on Saturday for a Noon game on ESPN. The winner will be in second place in the Big East and the team for Pitt to beat coming down the stretch.
Who figured the Dukes would get hot and help the Panthers’ RPI ranking?
Football recruiting roundup
Things we hope you saw. We had a nice picture of Tommie Duhart signing his Letter of Intent at Coffeyville CC. The folks that publish the Rutgers site had some good photos of Pitt commit Shariff Harrisand his teammate Will “The Thrill" Hill working out together at a sports complex in New Jersey. They sent us copies so we could do our own slide show but theirs was fine. We have pinned photos of Tommie Duhart and Shariff Harris at the top of the Between Fifth & Forbes Board. We will leave them there for a couple of days to insure everyone has had a chance to see them.
For the second year in a row Rivals.com has Pitt ranked in the Top 25 in the nation. For the second year in a row Pitt has the No. 1 class in the Big East (and it is not that close). This means for the past three years under Coach Wannstedt Pitt has been No. 2, No. 1 and No. 1 in the Big East Conference in recruiting rankings.
Over the past two years Pitt has been 6-8 on the football field in Big East games and has been out of the bowl picture despite the fact the conference has five bowl slots for only eight teams. We are getting close to the time that Pitt has to start moving back up in the Big East standings. It may not come as fast as we would like. Every team in the Big East Conference returns their quarterback but Pitt. West Virginia, Louisville and West Virginia all figure to be nationally ranked to open the 2007 season. South Florida is coming off a 9-4 year. The Bulls return most of their players plus an outstanding young quarterback. USF could be sitting just outside the Top 25. The Bulls signed running back Mike Ford. If he is the real deal they might leap frog the three favorites. They were competitive last year without much of a running game. These four figure to be voted in the first four slots in the Big East in preseason. Hopefully all these high recruiting rankings mean Pitt starts to show signs of moving up on the field in 2007. I think they will. The big question might be when?
I am sure the folks at Rival.com try to build a mathematical mode that works but a number of schools signed far more than the 25 recruits you are allowed. It is hard on math models. Obviously many will not qualify. These rankings are restated in August once they know who really showed up at fall practice. Here are a few that obviously are signing kids they know won’t make it. Tennessee-32, South Carolina-31, Auburn-30, Kansas State-34, Mississippi State-34 and Oregon State-34 are all way over the limit.
We were talking to Coach Ken Salem at Johnstown Bishop McCort. He told us that few recruiters were looking at defensive tackle Wayne Jones prior to his season but he lost weight last summer working out with his stepbrothers. He took football more seriously this year. He said that Wayne Jones was as good this year as any defensive player he has seen in the Johnstown area in a very long time. After Wayne had committed and signed a Letter of Intent he called me. I told him to bring his tight end (Mike Cruz) along with him. He laughed and said he was working on it.
Coach Salem felt Buddy Morris would do wonders for Wayne. Coach Salem said Pitt’s best recruit this year was Buddy Morrisso we are giving Buddy five-stars. I hope you got to see Panther Weekly this past week. They featured Buddy Morris. Good stuff! He has a reputation of working players very hard but still trying to put a little fun it.
Rivals.com has released their Top 100 juniors for 2008. There are several players of local interest on the list. Pitt will offer all of them. Landing them will not be easy. They should all be heavily recruited. Aliquippa football coach Matt Zmijanac was quoted this week as saying only the University of Beirut has failed to offer Jonathan Baldwin.
1) Jonathan Baldwin-WR-Aliquippa- His father played for Pitt
2) Brandon Beachum-LB-Youngstown Cardinal Mooney- He has been to Pitt a couple of times
3) Averin Collier-Ath-Rochester-His brother plays for Pitt
4) Josh Haden-Ath-Maryland-His brother went to Florida
5) Shayne Hale-LB-Gateway-Played with Pitt’s Aaron Smith
6) Will Hill-QB-St Peter’s -Teammate of Pitt’s Shariff Harris
7) Jared Holly-DB Easton
8) David Posluzny-LB-Hopewell-His brother played for Penn State
9) Terrelle Pryor-QB-Jeannette-No. 1 player in the country-He committed to Pitt last year
10) J.B. Shugarts-OL-His father played for IUP-He has visited Pitt
.
Last February Jeannette’s Terrelle Pryor attended the Pitt-Marquette basketball game at the Pete. A colleague told me there was a rumor that day at the Pete that Pryor had committed to Pitt. I called him and did an interview on him committing to Pitt. Who knows? He committed to Pitt once. Maybe he will do it a second time before it is all over.
There has been a ton of video crossing the Ticker on Terrelle Pryor this week. If you only have time to watch one please check out the video in which Rivals.com interviews him. You get to see him tell you where he stands and which sport he will play in his own words.
Montour LB/RB Christian Wilson continues to explode after a workout at the U.S. Army combine in San Antonio. He now has 17 offers. His new top eight are Auburn, Clemson, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio State, Pitt, Virginia Tech and Wisconsin. Schools that could be dropping out early include NC State, Virginia, Maryland and Michigan State.
We talked briefly to LeSean McCoy on Letter of Intent Day. He has often been tough to interview in recent months. Unfortunately I had to hang up on him to try and find out was going on at the Jabaal Sheard press conference. I explained and then he was rooting hard for Pitt to land him. He said he now weighs approximately 210 pounds if he is right he is not a real small back.
McCoy did say that he took a very heavy course load last fall and that he was only taking four courses in the spring semester. He plans to enroll at Pitt immediately after completing his courses in May. He is fired up and ready to go. Coach Dave Wannstedt was quoted this week as saying he will qualify. The light load this semester suggests this statement is on target.
Defensive end Jabaal Sheard announced at a press conference that he was going to Pitt at 11:00 am and signed a Letter of Intent with Pitt. He then delayed by several hours faxing the documents to Pitt as he was having second thoughts. I spoke to him minutes after he faxed the documents to Pitt. I congratulated him and he replied, “I don’t know. Arizona State sounded awfully good.” Coach Dave Wannstedt has a reputation of recruiting the mother very hard. I may be reading between the lines but I think Pitt got an assist from mom on this one.
Last week in the War Room I indicated we had heard Xavier Stinson was going to be an academic casualty. We knew at the time he was not coming to Pitt we just we not sure how fast the story would come out. It broke the following day. We did not think he would ever sign a Letter on Intent with Pitt. Not sure what happened but my guess is he simply had too high a jump in his ACT score. This will often cause eyebrows to go up.
Pitt will hold a Junior Day next weekend when the Pitt basketball team hosts Washington. Coach Wannstedt indicated he hopes to have 70 juniors in attendance. Most of these players will come from within driving distance of the Pitt campus because they have to pay their own way for this unofficial visit.
If you were following our Letter of Intent Day coverage you now know that we expect the following players to be invited walk-ons at Pitt although I am sure there will be others. They are all now in the database.
Chaz Alecxih DE (6’ 5” 230) Penn Manor
Andrew Janocko QB (6’ 0: 173) Clearfield
Jeff Stewart QB (6’ 3” 195) Bethel Park
The War Room is targeted towards our premium customers. We ask that all information reported in the War Room MUST stay right here! That’s the way this deal works. When this information is repeated outside of the Between Fifth and Forbes forum it only cheapens the price of yours and every other die-hard who have purchased premium services. The War Room is one of our more popular features...thank you all for keeping the information on this board.
