the recruit: Mark Hall

Name: Mark Hall
Position: OLB
Hometown: Virginia Beach
School: Green Run
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 210

24/7: 85; three stars
ESPN: 73; two stars; #96 OLB
Rivals: 5.6; three stars; #64 OLB
Scout: three stars; #55 OLB

Other offers: none

It's time to get this party started and get a closer look at the incoming class of 2012.  First to commit to UVA was Green Run linebacker Mark Hall, carrying over Mike London's success in Hampton Roads from 2011 into 2012.

It was a decent start to the class, too.  When final rankings come out, Hall should be a consensus top-20 player in the state, maybe top-15 depending on his season.  As with many (if not most) top football players, Hall plays both ways on the football team (tight end) and basketball as well.  And the ranking services are pretty consistent on their evaluations; the outlier is ESPN, the only unenthusiastic outlier among the four.  Hall committed practically on the spot after receiving his UVA offer, which was his first and only.  He and his family are highly enthusiastic about UVA, which dissuaded any other schools from offering.

Hall follows his former teammate David Dean's footsteps to UVA, but with Dean gone, Hall will be the leader of his Green Run defense this year.  Green Run missed out on the playoffs last year by a game; I think that's likely to be their ceiling again this year, as they're breaking in a new QB.  Hall made the all-District team as a TE instead of an LB last year; this coming season, I think that'll be reversed.  If he doesn't lead his team in tackles it'll be because teams never ran to his side.  To combat that, expect Hall to show up on the field all over the place, from defensive end to safety.

That said, once he gets to UVA he's a linebacker, and in for a redshirt year.  His first year in the program, there'll be four senior linebackers eating up playing time, two of whom (Laroy Reynolds and Steve Greer) are already starters as rising juniors.  Reynolds plays on the weak side, which is where I see Hall ending up.  Possibly.  When they graduate, there looks to be a young contingent of starters a couple years behind them ready to go, with Daquan Romero and Caleb Taylor the nominal placeholders on the outside.  Hall, however, is a recruit along very similar lines as those two and should provide a fair amount of competition.  The depth chart seems to show a bit of a logjam in the recruiting class of 2011 at linebacker, but D.J. Hill seems to be a candidate to move to fullback and Kevin Green is a candidate for driving me crazy because nobody has any idea where he might end up.  Linebacker is a best-guess.  The short answer: Hall will redshirt and then jump right into the fray.  The likelihood of him being a starter as soon as he's done with his redshirt year is small; the likelihood of him being on the field, contributing, after that redshirt year, is large.

As an aside, Mark Hall's younger brother is Devon Hall, a rising sophomore the age of a rising junior (he reclassified backwards a year) and a big recruiting target of Tony Bennett and his hoop squad.  Devon has potential to be a much, much bigger basketball recruit than Mark is a football recruit, and given how quickly Mark and his family came to the conclusion that UVA was the place for them, expect the Hoos to be serious players for Devon as well, if not the favorites.

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We're going to coincide this with a quickish recruiting board and map update, as follows:

- Removed OT Eric Olson from green (chose Northwestern.)

- Removed WR Deontay McManus from yellow (chose West Virginia.)

- Removed QB Brendan Nosovitch from red (probably will choose South Carolina; at any rate I think the QB ship has sailed and I don't see us taking any more this year.)

- Added RB Alden Hill to yellow.

- Moved OT Sean Karl and ATH Canaan Severin from yellow to green and reclassified Severin as a WR.