recruiting board update

Time again to drop an update, and I'd better get to it so we can get Kwontie Moore up where he belongs.  Moore is the first true prize of the class, one of the top five and maybe top three recruits in the state.  Locking up Moore is a terrific first step to another top-20 class for Mike London.  Getting commitments from Eli Harold, Anthony Cooper, and Michael Moore would just about write that in pen, if not stone.

The board and the map:

- Moved LB Kwontie Moore from blue to orange. First time I've moved someone up there vice adding them in - that's a good thing, we should do more of that. Moore makes two Norfolk Christian players to UVA.  One is off to VT - more in a sec - so that leaves Courtnye Wynn as the only uncommitted NCS player.  Wynn is probably a future Hoo as well.

- Removed WR Mario Nixon from green.  Nixon is the VT kid.  My guess: Nixon more or less always preferred VT but sort of wanted to play with his NCS friends too.  So when two of them committed to UVA and Nixon realized he still wanted to go to VT regardless, he made it official.

- Removed TE Joshua Parris and LB Noor Davis from yellow.  Parris committed to USF, Davis to Stanford, which damn are they getting a big defensive class or what.  We may take a TE in this class but the coaches don't seem to be recruiting them very hard, so we very well might not.  I said we'd take one in the early look, but that was before Jeremiah Mathis was announced as a full-timer there, so there's less need.  And there are other conversion candidates, too, should the need arise.  As for Davis, he's a helluva talent and would've been a really great addition but the competition was fierce and linebacker is no longer a pressing need.

- Moved ATH Joel Caleb from yellow to red.  This is basically a feel like last year's #1 recruit in Virginia, only in reverse: he seems destined to go out of state, but if he doesn't it'll be Tech.

- Moved OL Greg Pyke and LB Ken Ekanem from red to yellow.

- Added DT Pat Gamble to yellow.  Kind of against my better judgment because he's been GT, GT, GT all the way but whateva.

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I got so excited about the UVA-Michigan tilt in the ACC/BT Challenge that I forgot about all the rest of the stuff I meant to yak about.

- Still no Rhamel Bratton this weekend.  OK, that sucks, we really need his athleticism against Cornell.  More annoying is that Dom Starsia would make this announcement on Tuesday.  Cornell just went THANKS DOOD!  Why can't Starsia be like every coach everywhere and keep his status a state secret until five minutes before faceoff?  Cornell's game-planning just got that much easier.

- VT hoops took a little bit of a hit with swingman Manny Atkins's announcement that he'll be transferring.  On the one hand, he's transferring for what a lot of people would consider the wrong reasons, though he's at least honest about it where some guys would just say "I'm looking for a better fit."  On the other hand, what it comes down to is that you can probably consider Atkins a casualty of Seth Greenberg's absurdly short rotation.  Atkins was one of those guys who was at the back end of the (extremely minimal) rotation who would come in if one of the starters had to be pulled off on a stretcher or when Jeff Allen got into foul trouble.  If Allen didn't have a propensity to swipe at opponents' elbows as they blew past him, Atkins's minutes would've been halved.  If he played on any other team they'd have been almost double.

Atkins had the team's best O-rating of anyone, even including Malcolm Delaney, so even though he may or may not have ended up in the starting lineup, VT probably will not learn what they're missing until he resurfaces the way Derrick Byars did at Vanderbilt.  That O-rating gave him a better PORPAG than some starters on other teams - Wake's C.J. Harris, for example - despite Atkins playing just 32% of VT's minutes.  Losing him gives VT a depth hit and forces them to rely more on their incoming freshmen.