100% COMMITTED 💰 pic.twitter.com/U2oTz6IMZB— DAndreMartin_21 (@10waydre_) August 1, 2021
3 ⭐️ DL ranked by 247 originally from Durham NC now plays for Life Christian in Chesterfield.
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Beat out Shane and USCe.
LET'S GO!!!
HOKIES!!!
But only 100% committed?
😎🦃
Cool Video. Welcome home D'Andre!
That was one of the best commitment videos I've seen in a while.
Welcome home!!
Wearing that #2 on his insta gave me Tim Settle vibes
Future emergency punt returner as well?
I wouldn't call "guy who would have been called for unnecessary roughness every time he returned a punt" an emergency for anyone but the other team.
Great job, fuente and staff have had a great summer or recruiting.
Great video. A+
Very interested for French to get a longer look at him with Fall film. Very intriguing prospect who underwent a pretty substantial body transformation.
Wow. Is the kid interior line or a end? The kid seemed to be a wide receiver as recent as sophomore year. Now he might be a Aaron D/ Jon Allen type tackle.
Welcome to Blacksburg D'Andre!!!
He damn sure grew into that body. He looks very athletic.
I love that swat and pick 6 highlight! Hopefully he gets many more in Orange & Maroon!
Damnnation
I'd like to be happy about this, but until they are on campus, it might be wishful thinking. Now, a commit isn't what 'it used to mean'. I'm hopeful...
I know that we need defensive line help now and the tight end position is somewhat crowded right now, but would he work at tight end?
Too big - bet he plays at like 315 by the time he enrolls
DT or OT prospect for us, this dude is gonna be a baller
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Great recruiting win for VT. But no way we win 10 this year, though I'd love to be proven wrong.
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UNC - get the surprise win as UNC is unable to fully replace their top 2 rbs, and top 2 wrs.
MTSU - Hokies win, but not as heavily as we should.
WVU - Hokies bring the Black Diamond Trophy home
RIchmond - WTF in state home loss
Notre Dame - Hokies fall to 3-2
Pitt - Happens
Syracuse - Hokies right the ship to 4-3
GT - Hokies get the win 5-3
BC - Hokies get the win 6-3
Duke - Hokies get the win 7-3
Miami - Hard fought game, Canes win 7-4
UVA - Hokies win 8-4.
We're in at 8-4 (6-2) with UNC having lost to Clemson and Miami having lost to UNC and one WTF loss.
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Um, the black diamond is already home, were keeping it here.
Yes, but the game is in Morgantown, so the trophy has to come with us.
This but we beat Richmond by 60
I think it's entirely possible to win the Coastal on less than 10 wins this year.
Until UNC or Miami can prove to be consistent 10+ wins per year, I will not chalk them in for that many wins.
Since Fuente has taken over, the Coastal has been won with 9 (VT), 10 (Miami), Pitt (7), UVA (9), UNC (8).
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i think you need to stop doing this on every recruit commit thread
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Once is more than enough.
You really thought this was the place? A celebration thread for this recruit? Why?
honestly, I thought it was an interesting question and it was directly related to this commitment (via twitter).
You thought what was an interesting question? Your first post (and all the subsequent ones, for that matter) are just negative noise with zero content. If it's related to something on Twitter, link it. If you have thoughts, elaborate on them. This just makes the board unpleasant.
Yes, I thought "We're doing great in recruiting now but is it too late?" was an interesting question. I'm sorry I didn't link the twitter (don't know how to do that from phone). I added my thoughts on it and asked the community for their thoughts. I was trying to start a discussion - it wasn't just negative noise. Then everyone jumped down my throat about it and then I removed the content because apparently people weren't happy about it - now they just all downvoted my to oblivion to pile on....for not good reason. I got the message. You don't need to keep downvoting me to hell. I love TKP and I'm not giving it up but this type of over-sensitive community reaction is part of the reason several folks have walked away from TKP. It's frustrating to be ratioed on here and that's exactly what you lot are doing to me. Like, I get it, you don't want to discuss whether or not our recruiting success lately is in time. But when I recognized that the community doesn't want to talk about it I changed the post accordingly. So, please, stop f***ing piling on. It's not helping.
Didn't the post just say "Just Win"?
after my first edit, it said "just win". Before that, it was a couple paragraphs long and included the question, my thoughts on it, and my request for others to give theirs. But that got downvoted so message received and I changed it.
Or the reason is because this is a commitment post. A celebration of that one kid and his verbal commitment. Same as those assholes who post the same shit under the kids commitment tweet or insta post.
i think the community would prefer that kind of discussion to stick to the monthly recruiting thread and not on an individual commitment thread. discuss the particulars of an individual's recruitment (e.g. strong close head to head vs USCe), his tape (wow wtf he played WR a couple years ago and now he's a lineman? that's nuts), his potential in the program (is he OL or DL?) in this thread
that's completely fair. And I know that now so I won't be posting in these individual threads anymore. But for goodness sake, people can lay off the DVs. I got the message loud and clear.
Really? You're going to complain about OTHER people being too sensitive, and in the same post also complain about people downvoting you for posting five bitter/sarcastic GIFs on a celebration thread about a big-time recruit committing to VT? Especially when that is the exact thing someone should receive downvotes for in my opinion.
I'm gonna close down this comment thread, not because of you, but because it's all a distraction from a commitment post.
edit: looks like i gotta be quicker than that, dang it chris
Glad VT won out for a recruit over an SEC team. I'll take any good news this time of year!
I thought something was wrong with my scriptblocker for a good two minutes before I realized all the gifs in this thread were downvoted.
Eat that Beamer!
Feels wrong.
This gif was perfect before, but it's even better when used for "VT beat Shane for a recruit" purposes.
Listed as Edge but assume he will be DT?
He may stay at edge if he can be one of the top five in top speed, as Barno is. ;)
Whoa, this is a big win for VT. Everyone thought he was going to SC.
You have to love his size. Good Get
Exactly-that's SEC DE size...I'm giddy at his potential just from the measurables
It's bigger than SEC DE size.
It's like when folks said Tremaine Edmunds as a frosh was SEC-sized. No, he wasn't. He was bigger than SEC sized. That's one big reason he was a 1st rd pick.
What remains to be seen if he remains DE sized in general.
Martin and Hopper would be a great DT class
Are we looking at Braelin Moore as a DT or IOL?
I think DL but I'm not sure😂
Really looking like Gunner might be a DT as well. His most recent post wearing the 8 in some pics seems to add fuel to that (already burning) fire.
Could go either way but I think the plan is definitely to try outside first
definitely defense?
I think one of the conditions for his commitment was him starting on defense. Very similar situation to Wyatt Teller where the kid has a passion for defense but has all-conference potential on offense.
I would not be shocked if he switches to OL very early in his career.
I would just like to point out that Teller has all-pro potential not all conference.
The plan is to try defense first because that's what he would prefer, but if it doesn't work out they always have that backup plan to beef up and go OT
thanks, was just clarifying because "outside" could be DE or OT
I highly doubt it would be at dtackle - DE to start. Either side of the line he plays on the edge
I really want Hopper.
I dont care about the rating, that's a nice offer list.
It's a nice bump for Virginia Tech recruiting optics.
I care much more about the product on the field, but if the staff is going to keep banging the drum of "work harder than everyone else to identify and close on unknown talent", it is very encouraging to me to see kids who are unrated when they commit to us be initially rated in the 87-88 range. Malcolm Jones and Daequan Wright also fit that profile in this class, Xavier Chaplin was graded 86.
"Pete B" posted on twitter how poorly VT has done at this based on recruiting rank- by the numbers. We are one of the worst teams at "developing" talent recently. Interesting given Whit doubling down on that in his support of Fu.
notice i didn't say anything about developing the talent -- from a strictly recruiting standpoint, if we aren't going to close on 91+ talent (which we have three of in this class, it's something!) i'd much rather the evaluators at 247 peg our unrated kids as high 3*s. Initial rating of 87-88 isn't anything to sneeze at, and it's miles better than the staff trying to sell us on "identifying unknown talent" but bringing in a whole gaggle of 82-rated kids late in the cycle who were clearly Plan D/E/F at the position, because of gigantic whiffs at the top of the big board
I think the 21 and 22 classes are going to be a lot of gems and busts. The evaluation periods for these guys is much smaller with limited camps, game film, etc from COVID. There will be more late bloomers that fly under the radar until later this fall when they have their Senior season. I really think we have a few guys committed that can/will be bumped to 4*s by the time the 22 class wraps up.
Coleman on TSL started to beat this drum very hard when Fu was hired to justify medicore classes. They have back off of that now that the past 2 cycles, VT has offered and signed many kids with G5 offer lists. Whatever fits the narrative I guess
To clarify: do you mean your narrative, or theirs?
The narrative of bottom half ACC recruiting classes being "better" and "fine" than 7-8 years ago because of offer lists and not actual rankings. Their narrative not mine. When we sign a top 20 ranked class- great! look it's a top 20 class. When we sign a 50th ranked class - still great!! because a lot of these kids have offers from Minnesota, Arkansas and NC State. That was the narrative that TSL was pushing - "rankings don't matter, offers do"... yeah until the last 3 classes.
I agree. I think you have to look at the entire picture rather than selectively chop and change as you go. 2020 and 2021 were objectively bad classes. One was small, one wasn't, but both were down in regards to average talent.
Either way, let's not have an entire discussion about this in DAndre Martin's commitment thread.
I always thought that whole "power 5 offers is a much truer indicator" was overstated then and it's almost meaningless now with as many offers getting thrown out there by P5 teams to every 3* within a 1000 miles.
But he started it well before Fuente and I don't think it was ever used to justify anything. I think he actually believes it because he likes things he can quantify to come up with new angles and narratives.
Does not have a composite yet, interested to see what Rivals, ESPN, etc rate the kid.
Im just guessing. Rivals rating:5.5 ESPN rating.77