We mean that. This 2009 class will be the best group of players West Virginia has ever brought into school. Already this year, we have gotten verbal committments (yeah, yeah, worth as much as the paper they're written on) from enough fantastic players to make a lot of former classes. And it's late April
Logan Heastie, as well all know, is the #1 WR in the country and the #6 overall player in the class of 2009. His friend, Tahj Boyd, is the #21 rated QB in the country. Those alone were enough to get Mountaineer faithful excited. Of course, since the spring game, the momentum has built again at a fever pitch.
Usually, we would start with the biggest name to recently commit, but we're not sure we can make that call. It's not that easy -- there are simply too many positives to all of our commits. Since we have to start somewhere, let's just go with Dominik Davenport -- aka Baby D.
Davenport, a 6'1", 250 lb. DT, was already offered by Florida State, Virginia, and Maryland. The Roanoke Times has him rated as the #4 junior in all of Virginia. Want to know who is above him? Only Logan Heastie (#1) and Tahj Boyd (#3). Pretty heady company. If you've been lucky enough to see his highlight videos, you know that his motor simply doesn't stop running. He is the perfect disruptive force that you're looking for in a DT. As we finally saw this past year, WVU's defense is pretty damn good when the defensive line breaks through the offensive front.
Of course, just when you're satisfied with six great, early commits, we get word that Cole Bowers, the top in-state target, has pledged to the Mountaineers. Don't kid yourself -- Bowers is #1 in West Virginia. Craig Crawford? His arm looks like a noodle. If he's going to play anywhere in college, it's not going to be at QB. The point isn't to bash Crawford as much it is to highlight just how strong the commitment of Bowers is for WVU.
Then there's Chris Snook and Deon Long, guys that were both very close to picking up a lot of big offers (the word is that had Snook not verballed to WVU, Ohio State had their offer ready). That's what's great about these early commitments: we can head a lot of programs off at the pass. By offering early, we beat some other big programs to the punch (notice I am including us in the "big program" classification). While it's likely they'll still look at tape and offer and continue to fight, it's going to be easier for us to hold on to our players.
If you think we're being optimistic, we are. Very much so. This is the single best class we have personally seen at this point in my entire life. Frankly, if we had this class on September 1, we would still ecstatic. But here we are, late April, with just a fantastic group of players already excited to play for the Mountaineers. And that doesn't even include guys like Morgan Moses, Jerrod Askew, Caleb Porzel, and Sylvester Crawford, all top prospects who seem to favor the Mountaineers.
We have the chance to lock up a top 25 class by the start of fall practice. Then, we just have to go to work winning games and turning it into a top 10 class.