the recruit: Justin Renfrow

There's a little bit of interesting fluff in the CDP on Mamadi Diane and the slump he's been in so far this season. The good news is that as I write, the first half of the Brown game is winding to a close and Diane has 7 points on 3-of-5 shooting. If his knee is feeling better and he's breaking out of a slump this is the perfect time, what with the ACC part of the schedule starting in earnest on Saturday. And ohbytheway, speaking of Mo, Dave Leitao is clearly a reader of this blog, because guess who started the game tonight?

'Nuff bragging. Let's get to business.

Name: Justin Renfrow
Position: DE
Hometown: Philadelphia, PA
School: William Penn Charter
Height: 6'4"
Weight: 260

ESPN: 78, #43 DE
Rivals: 5.5, three stars, #43 DE, #20 player in PA
Scout: three stars, #18....umm, TE

The first thing that pops at you (or at least, me) in the short list of essentials there is Renfrow's school. You might recognize it as the school that our point guard, Sammy Zeglinski, hails from, and oh yeah, some guy who was also kinda halfway decent at basketball by the name of Sean Singletary.

So Renfrow's recruitment was actually very short. Renfrow had piled up about six offers - his favorite being North Carolina - by late June, when we had prospect camp. Renfrow arrived in town with no Virginia offer and left a Cavalier. We can thank Singletary for helping make Renfrow a Hoo fan. (Rivals $)

The neat thing too is that at 260 pounds, Renfrow is already a college-sized DE. Actually he's a little undersized for the 3-4 yet, because the 3-4 demands that DEs act like DT's against the run, but for pass-rushing he's pretty much already there and we shouldn't act surprised next year if he ends up on the field in obvious passing situations. A good candidate to play some as a true freshman.

So there's a lot of good things that add up here. Decent ratings from the services. Plenty of attention from quality BCS schools (West Virginia and UNC offered, Penn State was thinking about it.) Good size. Even got the newspaper accolades (second-team all city.) Oh, and he's a basketball player and a damn good one - good enough to attract attention from some of the better mid-majors around, like Davidson and Lehigh. So, plenty of athleticism. The only unfortunate thing is that there's no film on him that I've found. OK, there is, but it's all taken at some camp he went to, and I'm not a scout, so watching him do footwork drills around a three-yard patch of grass doesn't do anything for me. ESPN and Rivals have film from the same camp, and the Rivals one shows him basically getting repeatedly torched in pass coverage, which doesn't matter because he'll be going toward the quarterback instead of away from him when game time rolls around. Bottom line is, I would not bet on a redshirt here, and I like Renfrow's chances of reminding us of Jeffrey Fitzgerald only with good grades.