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Where is James Louis scholarship coming from?

Written by Duane Long | 31 July 2009

Now that the excitement of landing a great prospect like James Louis is over it is time to look at the fallout. It is over Buckeye fans. I understand the angst. It is not without merit. I am saying you have to look at the big picture and the big picture tells us that Florida has a number of verbals and are in good standing with several others who are at least as good and could be better. It is easier to convince a kid who is on the fence to come your way than it is to soothe the ruffled feathers of a player who is committed to another school that has showed him the love. They are also looking at 17 verbals with only 3 linemen on both sides of the ball committed. They have the attention of several players you just don't say no to. Louis is ours, Buckeye fans. But I digress.

Coming down from the high of nailing a verbal from a great looking player, we see the number staring us in the face. We have 16 scholarships. Stop counting the ones we may get. You cannot recruit like that. We have 16 and are looking at 9 verbals. I threw out my list of players who I thought we would get. Someone was going to be left out when I made that post. Now we have a surprise verbal. We are getting uncomfortably close to needs only list. I see Christian Bryant as in. He will not make a verbal until later but we know he is coming. Chad Hagan is likely to make it official before the season starts. We wait until signing day for Jordan Hicks. That leaves 4 spots. I wanted 4 OLs in this class. That is not going to happen. I accepted that some time ago. I think we need 3 but we have to have 2. I will believe we only take 1 when I see it, so one spot for another OL. That leaves Ty Williams, a TE and Will Hagerup from my list. I think that is where we see a player dropped. Recent news has me leaning toward Ty Williams or TE.

Gary Hosteau's recent news was not what we wanted to hear on Williams test score but I can't believe that we would back off him this early. When a kid is having trouble making a test score you make a decision about him, wait or not to wait. I have to think a really special athlete at this position would have to emerge for us to back off. I think the staff sees a special talent who wants to be here and are not having to put alot of time into his recruitment. Little pressure from other schools on Williams. Drew Basil verballed. That would have been the time to end our recruitment of another punter/kicker. We still did not back off Hagerup. The staff has thus far refused to offer another tight end in this class but have rolled out the red carpet for 2011 tight end Ben Koyack. He is the one with the Buckeye offer. Tight end is where I think we see us shave off a scholarship.


I hope we are doing this again soon. It means that we have gotten Corey Brown.
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