BREAKING: 4⭐️ OT Thomas Wilder has committed to Virginia TechThe 6-6.5 295 tackle from Virginia Beach, Va. chose the Hokies over Maryland and Penn State"They've been showing love since I was 13, 14. Might as well go there."Story: https://t.co/XWij9jTHQL pic.twitter.com/2pqOsA13Wt— Kolby Crawford (@kolby_crawford) July 3, 2025
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Awesome news! Not to mention beating out our eternal bully in penn state to land him
Moore is doing what we expected him to do! Great job on bringing in talent!
"Might as well go there" Put that on a t shirt
Jokes aside - definitely a solid pick up and much needed
A ringing endorsement! I guess Pry's long game is paying off?
I like the size of this guy. need to see how he moves his feet at contact.
Hate being this guy but his commitment is meaningless unless he's on campus.
The battle has just begun for Wilder - Penn State, UMD and I'm sure some other schools will be doing everything they can to flip his commitment.
But yes, directionarly positive move for VT recruiting.
Having Moore is a big selling point because he's putting guys in the league.
I still dont understand how UMd can recruit anyone, its not a campus id ever choose a.d the coaching is so-so at best.
PSU is probably acting like he hasn't committed.
I was thinking the same thing. Good that he did not go to PSU. Even better that he signed here. But until he is on the field in an actual game with a VT uniform on, I'm going to be cautious about getting too psyched up.
With all that said, has been some good momentum on the recruiting trail lately. Hopefully we can keep it going.
Ecstatic to pick up this level of in state player! We better have a bigger bag ready for when PSU comes back with their next offer.
Or a bigger boat
Feeder school!
I think this could be our best OL class in a very long time.
RIP
Yeah.... I saw this comment when I clicked to see the new comments and had the same thought.
welcome home!
May we start new threads for these?
For a decommit, would it not just make sense to update the original instead of creating anew? Its not like we don't have a long and documented history of updating commitment threads when they decide to flip elsewhere.... *sigh*
It's personal preference, but I don't think it does. And the same reaction takes place every time. There's also the other thread you created, so that might work as a catch-all. Either way, dredging up commitment threads from months to years ago doesn't seem the way to do it, to me at least.
I agree with this
BTW, forget the rankings. He is stiffer than a middle schooler watching his first Riley Ried movie.
I will keep saying it. If VT relies on VHSL footprint to turn this around, they are going to suck forever. Virginia HS kids are poorly coached, and the recruiting services haven't figured it out yet.
Might be the best analogy ive ever read on TKP
Do you think there's enough HS talent in the "6 hour radius" (NC, SC, MD, East Tennessee, etc) for VT to build the foundation for a successful team? Every team should have a handpicked QB, a couple Florida guys, etc, but VT can't just flip the switch and start recruiting nationally.
That 6 hour radius is completely picked over by teams that have been eating our lunch for the past 20 years in recruiting. That isn't going to change anytime soon outside of bringing in a head coach who brings absolute 100% legitimacy to VT from the start, and we aren't in the position to be able to do that.
Our recruiting needs to be open to the best players available, regardless of location. We aren't good enough to try and fence in a recruiting territory, not anymore. The sooner we realize that, the better.
There's a difference between 'we're losing in the 6-hour radius' and 'there's not enough talent in the 6-hour radius (even if we land it)' - my question was the latter.
The question is not 'are we open to the leaving the 6-hour radius?' Rather, the question is 'are players outside of the 6-hour radius willing to play at VT?'
Other than Oregon and ND, there's not a single team that went from regionally recognized to national recruiting power in a single season. You look at Clemson (which I still think is the blue print for VT - aka add money, hire well, recruit well, win the ACC, then flywheel) - they didn't start recruiting nationally until after their second national championship class.
All data from On3:
I know that Clemson - 4 hours south of us - can tap into Atlanta (edge of our 6 hour radius), but still, I think this is pretty telling that you can recruit well without traveling the whole country.
We aren't Clemson, and over the past 10 years we have more in common with schools like James Madison, Liberty and Old Dominion than we do with the schools we think we should be battling in recruiting. We aren't packing enough heat to think we can go into a dick measuring contest with the big boys in recruiting.
You are correct that there are enough players to build a team from. There just aren't enough for us.
When Frank turned the program around, a lot of the best players were outside of Virginia- Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, even Massachusettes guys were the top players. The Big East footprint made a huge difference.
Go where you need to to get players that fit. I can tell you from watching it first hand, high school football is much better in Pennsylvania, Maryland, South Carolina, and Georgia than in Virginia. It is going to take a lot of work, and it would help if Clemson Penn State and Tennessee fell off, but they have to commit to finding guys in those areas.
Yea I think this is my point. If we need to go beyond the state of VT to get players, that makes sense. But recruiting the entire nation seems like casting a net far too wide. The only schools that do this are the 12ish bluebloods who have coast to coast name recognition and a bigger NIL pool.
Are you talking about Quebec? Montreal?
😉
Might have spoken it into existence this season.
While many people complained Fuente went other states, the recruits from VA during his time weren't good and haven't gotten any better. If you look at the top VA recruits very few of them panned out. If you set the bar as 2 year starter for a 4* then most failed.
I mean are we surprised? Ever since VT took off in the 90s the focus in our region has been how the high school and AAU coaches could bilk people for more money for access to their players rather than actually coaching them up.
This. Winning the Commonwealth is not a sustainable path to winning football anymore.
I don't have a problem with recruiting from other states, but you still make contact with the coaches so you know when they do get talent that you might be interested in.
Very little ROI in that some times. But there are aways to keep in touch with coaching camps, but going to the schools cost a lot for little gain. Pry went and saw EVERY ONE and that didn't really help one bit.
Our base level talent is improved from Fuentes last year. That talent hasn't been developed well and is poorly coached.
Unsure if this needs a new thread, but Thomas Wilder has (re)committed!