recruiting board update of prescience

Minor housekeeping to be done on the recruiting board, and then you get to hear all about the three caballeros and their Harrisonburg adventures. Today is set aside for me to brag about my forecasting abilities.

Board here; map here. Updates:

- ATH Germone Hopper and LB Timothy Cole committed to places not named UVA, so I'd remove them, except I already did. I'm a smart one that way. Clemson and Texas, respectively, if you're wondering.

- S Alex Carter also committed somewhere not named UVA (Stanford) so he too is gone.

- Moved WR Eugene Lewis and TE Joshua Parris from green to yellow.

- Moved DT Roderick Chungong and MLB Kaiwan Lewis from yellow to green.

- Moved OL Brock Stadnik from yellow to red.

- Added OG Andre Miles-Redmond to green.

Also, the board is starting to become a lot more populated with stars.

Both Scout and 24/7 came out with their early national lists this past week. Rivals probably won't be til May and as I recall ESPN waits til early June. With Scout it's a list of 300 and 24/7, naturally, lists 247 players. Here are the ones on the recruiting board:

Scout 300:
#6 - DE Noah Spence (red)
#14 - DT Eddie Goldman (red)
#25 - QB Zeke Pike (red)
#31 - WR Leonte Carroo (red)
#44 - RB Wes Brown (green)
#47 - CB Ronald Darby (red)
#54 - CB Geno Smith (red)
#63 - OT Brock Stadnik (red)
#87 - WR Eugene Lewis (yellow)
#103 - LB Noor Davis (yellow)
#135 - OLB Eli Harold (green)
#161 - MLB Kaiwan Lewis (green)
#163 - QB Devin Fuller (red)
#186 - DE Ken Ekanem (yellow)
#195 - DT Korren Kirven (red)
#205 - MLB Quanzell Lambert (yellow)
#288 - WR Joel Caleb (yellow)
#298 - S C.J. Prosise (green)

Positions are as listed by Scout, which is always the least accurate of all the services. That's a longish list, but don't get excited. Eight are red and most of those are getting close to being dropped right off the list. Barring any shockers the only red names on that list that are remotely likely to move up in the next few weeks are Fuller and Goldman and maybe Kirven. I'm close to moving Ekanem down from yellow too, as well as Brown to yellow from green. Of the names on that list, the ones that should pique your interest the most for now are Harold, K. Lewis, and Prosise.

Caleb, by the way, is quite a surprise at just 288 considering how many people are talking him up for top prospect in the Commonwealth.

Now for the 24/7 247. Or whatever name it's supposed to go by.

#3 - DT Eddie Goldman (red)
#17 - ATH Devin Fuller (red)
#18 - QB Zeke Pike (red)
#29 - CB Geno Smith (red)
#32 - WDE Noah Spence (red)
#34 - OLB Noor Davis (yellow)
#38 - WDE Eli Harold (green)
#55 - WR Joel Caleb (yellow)
#63 - DT Korren Kirven (red)
#64 - ATH Ronald Darby (red)
#72 - OT Brock Stadnik (red)
#97 - ILB Kwontie Moore (blue)
#125 - SDE Michael Moore (blue)
#127 - OLB Quanzell Lambert (yellow)
#139 - OLB Deontay McManus (yellow)
#150 - ATH Cyrus Jones (yellow)
#159 - WDE Ken Ekanem (yellow)
#168 - WR Canaan Severin (yellow)
#171 - RB Wes Brown (green)
#200 - OT Greg Pyke (red)
#202 - OT Adam Bisnowaty (green)
#219 - WR Eugene Lewis (yellow)
#220 - WR Anthony Cooper (blue)
#236 - DT Courtnye Wynn (blue)
#240 - ILB Kaiwan Lewis (green)
#245 - WR Leonte Carroo (red)

Again, positions as listed on the site. This is a much more Virginia-friendly list. If you're the optimistic type you're advised to use this one. Not just players UVA is "in on," there are four here who I do think will be Hoos (both Moores, Cooper, and Wynn) and a few other names to follow with great interest (Harold, Bisnowaty, K. Lewis.) This could be the result of the fact that 24/7 doesn't have affiliates for every team out there yet but does have a UVA affiliate.

Anyway, if that list holds, UVA is set up very well for a solid national ranking from at least one of the sites.

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NC State hired former Alabama coach Mark Gottfried to coach their basketball team, which I'm personally really disappointed about because I don't have even the slightest opinion about that. That leaves just one ACC program left that's looking for a coach, which is Miami after Frank Haith surprisingly jumped ship to Missouri. Haith was on the bottom tier of coaches in the league, but it's only about 50/50 they'll improve on him this late in the process.

So that leaves our jolly crew of Harrisonburg revelers: Ausar Walcott, Mike Price, and Devin Wallace, as you'll recall, who barged into a party one day in January and started harshing everyone's mellow by yelling and throwing punches. They chose this course of action because somebody was hollering racial slurs at them. You stay classy, JMU.

I told you back then that Racist Guy would be in hot water if he were identified, and lo and behold, he was and is. As well he should. Score one for me. I said also that the felony charges would disappear and they'd each get slapped with a misdemeanor or two after their lawyers worked out a deal, and score two for me because that's the way it went down.

So Walcott is free and clear in the eyes of the law and Price and Wallace have a year of probation each. None of them are free and clear in the eyes of the London; all remain suspended and probably will until semester grades are out. Many Hoo fans are of the opinion Walcott should be reinstated since he was cleared by the courts, but that's crap: just because he was found to have committed no crime doesn't mean he was conducting himself within the bounds of expectations for a UVA football players. I'm still of the opinion Wallace should be gone now that a conviction has been reached, as punishment for lying by omission to London about his previous run-in with the law. But I'm perfectly fine with continuing Walcott's suspension until he jumps through his hoops. Maybe there are fewer hoops since he apparently had the good sense not to throw a punch, but he still wasn't conducting himself professionally at all.

And - not at all condoning Price's decision to slug the 165-pound Nathan Yowell, who was being a twerp for no good reason other than an overabundance of Natty Light - but I'll bet Yowell never, ever again mouths off to three pissed-off football players, and has learned the definition of "middleweight."