Discuss and share any recruiting topics for April 2024 that don't warrant their own threads. Commits and decommits warrant their own threads.
This recruiting thread is used to share information regarding VT-specific targets, PWO offers, scholarship offers, visits, camps, and general news, in addition to larger trends. In the interests of limiting load times, favor linking to tweets rather than embedding. And if you want to embed, please check the thread to see if a tweet was already embedded prior to adding it yourself.
[0] Please do some digging to share original content (e.g. embed the original tweet, not a link to another post/website with said tweet), add context / relevant information and respect the Community Guidelines.
[1] New commitments, decommitments, portal entries, etc... deserve their own thread. Please read the brief best-practice tips at the top of the recruiting forum
[2] Scared money don't make money.
[3] Pry Marve 2024
[4] We must ride on the wings of the Pry-beast
[5] Scholarships to all the VA Top 10
[6] There is NNOOOOO number six.
Comments
locking that thread and letting it sink to the bottom of the abyss
i know it's the offseason but the recruiting thread (or anywhere else on TKP) is not the place to discuss any lingering specters of the confederacy
i would love a list of any important recruits gonna be on campus for spring game, if anyone has one!
good luck, have fun, be nice, go hokies
responding to Chachi:
yeah, but they don't have to support college football, do they?
sorry, I started making this comment as you were typing yours
ok I'm done now. So...how bout them hokie recruits?
I like the one that's really fast and strong. I think they'd be a great asset and really make a difference on day one on offense or maybe defense. And once the strength coach gets a hold of them, woo boy, watch out.
Also, I really like that other guy; not as athletic, but a real gritty guy, a first in last out kinda guy, a locker room glue guy, brings the intangibles that help everyone play above their level.
All in all, future looks bright!
That second guy... He's a coaches kid isn't he?
Really grew up in the game, has an instinctive understanding of it.
Wow, sounds like these two can get us to the playoffs! How can I funnel my NIL $$ to them?
Really, it's okay, I don't live in any of the aforementioned poor states
Will try to sort through X for the visitors for this weekend. There were alot announced about a month ago so may have to dig a bit.
Going to start and update as I pull names. Not going to do full profiles.
Lavar Keyes WR, Class of 25
Salvatore Capria, RB, Class of 25
Noah Chambers, LB, Class of 25
Yalik Carter, WR/CB, Class of 26
Ian Pope, DE/TE, Class of 25
Kingston Dunagan, LB, Class of 26
Jadon Blair, Safety, Class of 25
Jeff "El Jefe" Exinor, WR, Class of 25
Malik Washington, QB, Class of 25
Armani Reid, ATH, Class of 25
Mathieu Kanu, ATH, Class of 26
Xavier Wimbush DB, Class of 26
Jase Rhodes, DB, Class of 26
Colin Bellomy, DE/TE, Class of 25
Dylan Friedman, C/OG, Class of 25
MBB:
Jalen Leach, Fairfield, Guard, 16.2ppg, 4.1rpg
I want Jeff Exinor on his nickname alone.
I guess he pronounces his name "Heff". Born Heffrey.
I'll wait for the obligatory "It's pronounced......"
It's pronounced Kevin" - there ya go!
We need to throw all the NIL money we can at El Jefe. The NIL merch alone would make a mint.
Can we get El Rods to NIL him up?
Coen Logan, ATH, Class of 26
Amare Parker, ATH Class of 25
Nick Reddish, DB Class of 26
Reed Ezell, WR, Class of 26
Khavijae Nixon OL Class of 25
Brady Baker OL/DL Class of 25
Braylon Peebles DB, Class of 26
Brandon Hettwer, TE, Class of 25
A few brothers on these lists?
Yes Delane and Reddish at least. Not sure on the others.
Not sure on Peebles.
Wimbush too?
Will look into it. Not sure on that one. Definitely has that Beamer feeling of multiple families together. Have to wonder what age the Fullers kids are if there are boys.
I see you have men's basketball on there so I'm gonna add this to this thread for women's basketball: Raegan Beers (6'4 PF/Oregon State) has entered the transfer portal. We should go after this girl for sure!!
I was only including him on here because he is visiting this weekend. I haven't seen any WBB listed to visit this weekend.
VT may not be 1A or 1B, but ssshhh (VT is secretly 1AA)
Nah. We're straight up number 1
We, and every other team outside the P2, are certainly trending that way.
Yup
Lincoln Halliday
Class of 2028
DE 6'2 220 lbs
No profiles yet
Do they really have #COLTBOYZ on the sides of their pants, or is that photochopped in?
The pace of new comments has really slowed down since you closed the other thread. ;^)
4 star cb Jahmari DeLoatch just got a prediction to the good guys from Stamm.
I'm only seeing Michigan CB's on 247 and on3
Predictions:
247 - 3 for UMich, latest occurring first week of Jan
On3 - 1 for UMich, from Nov
Rivals - 1 for UMich from Dec; 1 for VT from today
All those UMich predictions came when Harbaugh was still coaching there.
Andrew Chamblee
OT, Freshman (3 years eligibility)
#17 OT out of high school
On3 Article
Give us the beef...
Agents? Guess that makes sense and is the next step in this NIL world. Good lord
Hokies have offered and coaches are talking to him about a visit
Offensive lineman, and please some help at linebacker. Still concerned after what I saw at spring game.
Kendall Daniels Jr
Safety, Maury
4* 90 rated 247Sports
247Sports
92 rated IOL from Va Beach
https://247sports.com/player/jaylen-gilchrist-46131381/
eclectic range of programs. probably don't see too many top lists with with these tiers:
1. UGA, 'Bama
2. PSU
3. USC/VT
4. UMd
5. UVA
High school coach is a UVA grad, fwiw
TBH, if you strive for accuracy, I'd swap VT and UMd on this list, at least financially. Not that I like that, I don't. But IIWII.
Not a significant difference between Terps and VT. Last year it was a $5M difference between them in overall athletic budget. UMD was $114M to VT $109M. That said, Hokies have nearly 130 more athletes on scholarship although the two schools appear to have the same number of sports. Both schools were break even budgets.
"Hokies have nearly 130 more athletes on scholarship although the two schools appear to have the same number of sports." - how does this jive? Maryland has 5 teams with 2 people on them each?
For most olympic sports it is not uncommon to not a have a full scholarship available for every athlete on the team. It sounds like we allocate more per team than Maryland does. Maybe this is the mythical reason why our Athletic Department is so poor compared to our peers
One of my friends ran D1 track and the outdoor track team had 1.5 scholarships total. One Olympic qualifying athlete had a scholly and the half a scholarship was split with 2 runners given a quarter each.
This is surprising, given the difference in media rights distributions between the ACC and B1G.
They are the very bottom of the Big10 in ticket sales/other revenue for their revenue sports. Even UVA had better numbers in terms of dollars generated from tickets, merch, concessions etc. than Maryland and UVA was the worst in the ACC.
Lol damn that is bad. Good for them for sucking so much
ftfy
Virginia Tech is a better draw than Maryland, better job, has a much larger engaged fan base, better boosters. The only thing Maryland has over us right now is a better TV contract, which doesn't overshadow everything else. Also fuck them
I read this as 'enraged fanbase", and I concur. Fuck them. Consider me enraged
This comment made my day haha
Agree. The lowest of the P2 is not on the same level as upper-tier ACC and Big12. TV dollars could change that in the long run, but not yet, and not the way VT football is currently operating. For the next 4-5 years, a player would be better served in a Hokie uniform than a Terp uniform. It's that plain and simple.
It's going to take a lot to make Vandy a better job than VT, who wants to lose in front of 100 fans, and Pry has been there and won a bit and still I would be surprised if he would even listen to Vandy for a job.
I had never really thought about it before reading your comment. But I swear, I can't recall ever meeting a single Maryland fan in my 40+ years on this rock.
I'm related to one by marriage. And he was in a fraternity with Scott Van Pelt.
It's 100% a hoops school. They DO have hoops fans. Granted I lived in MD for 30 years
Back in the Gary Williams days, Terps fans were everywhere in the DMV.
Even though Gary won a Natty, Lefty was the Frank Beamer of Terps BBall. He's the foundation for several generations of Terps fandom.
Fun Fact: Lefty was in the first wave of NCAA basketball coaches to sign a shoe deal with Nike. My great aunt was on his staff when that happened and she gave me this weird shirt with the old vintage Nike logo on the back and on the front left chest is a basketball that reads, "Maryland Basketball Ranked #8".
Weird flex, but ok.
Growing up in MD, I genuinely believed that UMD/Duke was the premiere ACC Basketball rivalry. That 2001 team with Juan Dixon, Steve Blake, Lonny Baxter, Chris Wilcox, etc was probably the first sports team I was a fan of.
Haven't met one of those either.
Maybe...
Enviable position, sometimes.
Unfortunately my sister is marrying one.
Both Virginia schools in the back and on the outside....
Ramon Brown, RB in portal out of Maryland will be visiting on the 23rd
Do you mean Dallan Hayden from Ohio State or Ramon Brown from Maryland. Because I would definitely take one and definitely not take the other
Brown from UMD. Looked down a row on a table scrolling over.
Hayden has been offered as well as Keyron Crawford from Arkansas
Would love to land one of these guys. The RB room is a bit meh behind Tuten. I know we have guys who can be serviceable in spots, but we don't have another stud in that room IMO.
I thought the backup RBs looked great in the Spring Game, not sure we need another, but this is modern football. Is a prayer in the portal is better than a player you have at that position, you pick them up and wait for the next man down the totem pole to transfer.
Thomas is definitely better than Brown. I really like Coney and Tyler Mason is a good talent imo. Brown would probably be 3rd or 4th on the roster
Another angle is perception. I don't know that I want the to recruits in the state looking at VT like a safety school. That they can commit to Bama and if it didn't work, they can fall back on Tech. OTOH I think we should be always trying to improve the talent level and competition in the position groups. If Brown is not clearly better than our second stringers, then let him keep walking and develop the players who chose VT.
Wasn't he committed to us back in the Fuente days? May have flipped to MD after fuente got fired
Could have committed to Beamer and have a year left/waivers.
Was he the one who was "all in" committed until he flipped on signing day which was later rumored to be a Locksley plan to generate hype for Maryland by having several players "flip" on signing day?
WR KeAndre Lambert-Smith is in the portal out of Penn State, from Norfolk.
Kam's nephew and PSU's best receiver last year. Hard to envision him coming here with the way our wr room is looking for 2024, but stranger things have happened
I feel like you have to offer, in the interest of optics. But I don't know that it makes sense for either party right now.
I think our top 4 receivers are all better than him
I agree.
I also think that it is absolutely worth pointing out the number of higher rated Virginia recruits that committed elsewhere, who transferred out in their careers.
yup, it's a chicken/egg -- were they just not that good or would they have been better off coming here?
Iezzi (and the Fuente regime) caught a LOT of heat for basically saying they were slow playing a lot of these VA kids and being down on the actual quality of talent, but not a lot of those kids actually made him look all that foolish. The problem is that instead of getting better players from elsewhere in their place, Fuente wound up with worse ones when he whiffed on all the out-of-state and out-of-region highly-rated targets
yeah saying Virginia talent is down is a cool story. Until those kids sign with Bama, Clemson, Penn State and Ohio State. ummmmm. Wrong. If Fuente was correct, the top virginia players would be signing with lesser schools. They didn't and never have. Its simple logic.
if they were total and complete busts, does it make it a bad eval or a good one?
depends on if Nick Saban gave them a shot and then some other 5 star out performed them or if they got benched on their intramural team
Shoot maybe more
IMO- we are not at the point of winning enough to shun proven P5 WR's that produced at big time programs. Louisville totally over-matched out WRs last year for example.
This is true but its pretty easy to overmatch our WRs when their LB and and DL ate our OL for lunch
Christian "Cheez" Evans
3* DL 6'3 280 lbs
Class of 25
HUDL Profile
247Sports
Rivals Profile
Personal Website
Will CHEEZ be the IT man?
He's a WHIZ kid!
I think he'll be able to cut it.
I'm going to guess that French gives this prospect a poor rating
Probably can't even stomach a film review
These comments are High Cheddar
All jokes aside, I hope he's a muenster on the field for us.
Well, as long as there are no holes.
I have a feeling he's gonna be pretty gouda.
He could become GOAT.....I just hope he doesn't leave us feeling Blue.
I just Swiss these puns would end already...
Havarti close the door on his way out
Heard his little brother Colby Jack is even better
I thought he was a muenster
Peak TKPC off-season right here...
Yeah, these comments have been Extra Sharp
Observing this thread has been quite Sirene.
Levi Babin
DB 6' 180 lbs
Class of 27, Episcopal HS Alexandria VA
HUDL Profile
No 247 Profile yet
14 years old?!? Jesus, he's young...
Will only be a sophomore in HS next year.
Well, as long as he's 800% committed.
He may not know how much 800% is. He's so young, he probably hasn't had percentages in school yet!
Oklahoma just got a commit from a class of '27 recruit lol
Nice article about Safety JaDon Blair who plays for Mt. Tabor HS in Winston Salem, NC. https://myfox8.com/sports/triad-high-school/mount-tabor-high-school-football-star-safety-being-recruited-by-top-colleges/
He has the Louisville fan base thinking he committed after he posted a #gocards with him in their uniform.
Kaiden Prothro
WR/TE/OLB 6'6 200 lbs (Holt is recruiter so assume TE target)
Class of 26 Bowdon HS Bowdon, GA
HUDL Profile
Not Ranked 247Sports
4* On3/Rivals On3 Profile
He big. Has 2 years of H.S. to grow more.
With last name Prothro, is there TE-to-QB in his future (somebody had to say it)
Well before NIL, his name was Amatuerthro
Hokies Portal Offers the last two days
Dyoni Hill, CB, Marshall
No Ranking as Transfer, was 3* out of HS
247Sports
Collin Schlee, QB, UCLA, from MD.
3* Transfer Rating 247Sports
247Sports
Penny Boone, RB, Louisville
4* Transfer grade
247Sports
Greedy Vance Jr, CB, FSU
No transfer ranking, 3* out of HS
247Sports
The offers to Vance and Hill are peculiar. These CBs have 1 to 2 years left. I'm wondering the overall plan here. VT's CB room is stacked with two of the best CBs in football and good young talent that are ready to have their roles increased. Maybe Delane to Safety? I don't know what else would make sense.
And I doubt Vance will accept a back up or nickel role (Hill maybe). Vance has extensive experience including starting many games at L'ville and at FSU. Hill played in all games last year at Marshall.
My guess is that the staff would like a fifth cornerback who has real game experience to sure up depth at the position and to allow them to be more comfortable shifting guys around in the event whoever ends up the top two at safety gets dinged up or misses time. Because I think we all know the safety spot is probably the weak link after the linebackers.
This especially makes sense if we see Strong play more in the slot this season or if we see them modify our nickel package looks (do we think Brumfield can stay on the field on 3rd down if he didn't play in the nickel package at MTSU?)
Boone seems odd to me, we have Tuten and Thomas with Prioleau and Coney looking ready to step up. 5 RBs is a lot for playing time.
4*'s Malik Washington (QB) and Jeff Exinor (WR) both received predictions to the good guys from Adam Friedman. Supposedly Exinor was close to committing on his visit this past weekend.
FYI Friedman has an 87% hit rate.
Feel like Exinor could end up at TE, kid is already huge (220).
Malik Washington
Class of 25
4* 90 rating 247 (14th QB in class)
247Sports
HUDL Profile
Jeff Exinor
6'2 220
Class of 25
4* 90 rating 247 (#8 ATH in class)
247Sports
HUDL Profile
Malik and Kelden at QB in the same class would be amazing. Kelden is extremely underrated right now (IMO).
Our coaches can use this to recruit against UVA right?
Does UVA have a recruit we'd want?
often they get one, maybe two
More recruits we want than fans at the spring game
If I'm pulling a couple $100k or more from the school, do I really care how many are at the spring game/festival?
Put up with UVA students, have the team I'm on lose and be nationally ridiculed regularly, have no fan support, get slaughtered in the most important game (to the few that care about football) every year, never go bowling. It would probably take a few hundred thousand more than anyone would offer....
Caleb Williams to South Carolina along with Shamarri Earls who it doesn't seem like we were ever in the hunt for https://247sports.com/Season/2025-Football/Commits/
Ugh....looks like Pry helped push UNC out and now the S.C. schools are cleaning up on on the 2025 VA Class.
Clemson....makes some sense, but USCe????
It will be interesting to see what happens if USCe struggles again this year, I think Shane is safe barring utter disaster this year but that seat is potentially going to start warming up.
3 in the top 10 and #11 of the players in VA to Sakerlina, another 3 to Clemson. So much for putting up a wall around the state...
Did you expect we'd land the the top-ten in state every year?
Edit to add that two of the players you mentioned each just have one crystal ball to USCe -- Gilchrist is from months ago. It's not 7 of the top 11 committed to go elsewhere
Not the entire top 10, but man, hoping for more than 2
If we pull in 3 of the 12 composite 4*s, where does that fall relative to expectations?
For whatever reason I want to say that during our heyday that even then it was rare that we would get more than 2 or 3 of the top ten. I have not checked in with Pepperidge Farms on this so I am not sure if I am remembering correctly.
I can dig through my post history, but I think there were two years from 2003 to 2023 that we got 5 or more of the VA top 10.
EDIT: found it. There are three years we got half (or more) of the top 10 in VA: 2003 (5), 2005 (6), and 2012 (5). There was one other year we got 4 of the VA Top 10 (2008). Every other year over the last 2 decades has been 0-3 of the top 10 players from the commonwealth.
ALTHOUGH - one could argue (and I would) that pre-2008sh, the staff was significantly better at scouting the commonwealth than any recruiting service. Nowadays, I think all you can ask is that your staff is marginally better at scouting than the recruiting services.
Sounds about right.
In general, Pepperidge Farms has a selective memory.
At about an 8 win average
Shane Beamer connection
Plus SEC $$$
What is South Carolina sending back to Chicago for that pick?
Tyler Baron (Woody's brother) is back in the portal after basically a spring at Louisville. Might be a high risk player given his transfer history at this point, but we could use the help on DL.
Louisville Winter Portal Checks bouncing left and right
Somebody needs to tell him Hardee's coupons never bounce
News coming?
Would assume it's basketball, not football. I think Arvin is more into bball.
Latest on the Portal Recruiting:
VT has about 2-3 roster scholarships available. It does not seem like VT will be making any significant upgrades. There is not a whole lot of talent in the Spring portal, which is mostly players that did not make the two-deep during Spring practice.
Edit: Additionally, it's interesting that there were zero offers for linebackers. I'm not sure what that says about the players in the portal or how the coaches feel about the players on the team. It's hard to question Pry with his track record but also hard not to question Pry when the linebackers are struggling to fill gaps in the Spring Game. Definitely the most enigmatic position from our armchair perspective.
McCaskill is more interesting to me than Brown by a lot but I'm still perplexed by our want for a veteran RB. We don't have a whole lot of needs (based on whats on the board obviously we'd take upgrades at any of the defensive front 7 and the OL but those pieces just aren't available) but it's a weird offer list to me.
I think it's less about Tuten and Malachi and more about the overall room. Malachi has a history of injury, the staff is on the record saying Tuten wasn't in good enough shape at times last season to carry a huge workload, and then after that you have two guys with upside but no experience. I think adding a guy there makes some sense.
The safety from Ohio State I wanna say we made a play on when he transferred from Syracuse, he had good production in the ACC before and is from Richmond. Plus, we can pitch competition for playing time. Not sure if we have the $$ or desire, but on paper that move makes sense....
Jahad Carter was once a Hokies commit who went the FUMA route and then wound up at Syracuse before going to anOSU. confusing case, not really sure what happened actually
Ah thanks!
Shame he never made it here.
I was a substitute teacher at the time, and actually was subbing in one of his classes on the NSD in which he announced his commitment to Tech.
He turned in an assignment with the sqrt 1 logo next to his name. He wanted to be here.
I'm on record, and will continue to be so, saying that our RB room isn't as stacked as folks think. If Tuten goes down, things will get dicey.
It's only 4 guys so we definitely need another body with how much we're gonna run the ball. Thomas is good, I think people sleep on him. But he's also injury prone I think it's fine to get another solid 3rd back. Coney should be good enough to contribute this year also.
It just seems like yesterday that we had 50 in the RB room.
We had 50 bodies.
We did not have 50 RBs
Staff seems to love Coney. They've been talking him up since he got here, despite all the injuries. Have to believe if he can stay healthy he can be as good as Thomas.
Yeah, I hope they are right on that one! I liked his HS tape. But again, if we are going to take a step forward we need more guys like Tuten (not exactly, but with some elite skills) in the room.
I definitely don't have the best handle on our roster, but we're likely losing a lot of production at CB (Delane, Strong) to the draft/graduation this year. Maybe we want to get the pipeline going now?
Coach Cheetah mentioned in a podcast they only took 1 CB recruit in the 2024 signing class because the room was pretty full and other positions were of greater need. But it looks like some of the CBs signed in 2023 moved to S this Spring.
At CB, it's Strong, Delane, Lovett, Johnson, and true freshman Clarke.
At S, it's Jones, Stroman, Phillips, Cotman, Fleming and true freshmen Reddish and Jenkins.
So, it's a decently deep group, but definitely young and inexperienced. Cotman and Fleming may be able to switch back to CB, if major injuries happened on the CB side.
It would be great if VT could get Ponds, who was a freshman-all American at JMU and probably the best player on that board. But he may be looking for a starting role and if he were to come to VT, he would be battling Lovett for that 3rd CB spot. Also, an interesting tidbit is that his coach at JMU was Eddie Whitley, so I don't know if that's good or bad for the Hokies.
Cotmans in the transfer portal I believe
oh, that's right. Thanks. Was using the Spring game rosters.
Is Jenkins not still playing STAR? Or you mean Noah Jenkins coming in? I know Johnson was getting some safety snaps in the spring as well.
Pennix is a Nickel then CB I believe. Krystian Williams was getting snaps at both CB and Safety and Thomas Williams is at Safety? Think the staff is pretty high on all three of them
Keonte Jenkins is still star backer. He is the most consistent line backer we have. Very good tackler, and transitioned from safety, where he was looking to be a long term starter since he was a freshman.
I was referring to Noah Jenkins, who probably could be Star or Safety. I don't know where he is currently projected.
Good point on the others. VT has young depth. I don't know why they are pursuing some of these young DBs in the portal, except I think it makes total sense to go for Pond. He looks to be a game-changer type player.