Thursday, January 8, 2009

recruiting giveth and recruiting taketh away

So, at midnight tonight we will have just as many recruits for the 2009 class as we had at midnight last night. It's just, the names are a bit different.

First the bad news: RB Alex Owah is academically ineligible for UVA and won't be coming. This puts a serious crimp in the RB lineup for the future. Perry Jones is really a safety, Dominique Wallace is probably more of a fullback than a guy to tote the load, and nobody's quite sure exactly where Quintin Hunter will end up. This throws the tailback future up in the air - there's Mikell Simpson of course, Raynard Horne, redshirt freshman Torrey Mack, but losing Owah takes a big chunk out of the future depth. It's late in the game to move in on another RB for '09 - if we were Michigan we could do this, but we're not, unless we want to go and offer some guy who was otherwise looking at Kent State. We might be looking at a position switch for someone in the spring; maybe the coaches decide Jones is a running back after all, or maybe a defensive back buried on the secondary depth chart gets buried on the RB depth chart instead.

But, even if there's nobody to block for, at least we will have someone to do the blocking. Say hi to Oday Aboushi, the latest and greatest verbal commit. Aboushi is a big fella at 300 pounds and instantly becomes one of the top five rated recruits in the class. The offensive line for '09 is now in solid shape, even without Morgan Moses, who may need prep school no matter where he goes. Going by star ratings and such, this looks like the best year for O-line recruiting since '05, when we picked up Eugene Monroe and Branden Albert. Hell, our starting center came in as a tight end; and we wonder why we have a tough time runblocking. So this is not unexpected, but it's terrific news.

P.S. - the recruiting board is looking oranger and oranger all the time, and is duly updated.

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