West Virginia Football Recruiting Update (3/6/15)

Recruiting has been fairly quiet and I was a bit under the weather earlier in the week which is the reason for the delayed posting but I thought a little rundown of the offers out could be interesting. The WVU staff has been busy reaching out to a plethora recruits and hopefully more results follow soon. It is still early in the cycle and a lot of kids won't make their minds up for a good while but this is still a key period. The West Virginia coaching staff has been great about identifying talent early and making swift offers. Recruits remember their first offers and it can really help keep WVU in contention when other schools start knocking. A great example of this is Jovon Durante and that worked out pretty well for the Mountaineers so far.

Right now the Mountaineers have about 163 offers out according to EerSports official offer sheet (which you can check out here). That is a fairly typical start these days as the staff has been trying to be more and more selective to develop quality depth. The last recruiting cycle finished with 203 offers extended while the couple years (2013 & 2014) before that fell more in the 280-300 range. In the past typically the successful classes tended to have between 100-200 offers extended. Some of that spike is likely due to WVU trying to recruit Texas harder those years but also fewer top targets chose WVU at the end of the day.

Right now the position with the most offers out is wide receiver by a long shot, with 36 extended so far. Steven Smothers, 4 star from Maryland (remind you of anyone...), is a speedster that headlines the group and is probably the most likely to commit to WVU as well. There are some other big-time prospects targeted however that the staff is definitely trying to reel in. With Kevin White's draft stock soaring and Mario Alford performing as well, the WR U talks about Morgantown will start up again and it's going to make it even easier for high profile wide-receivers to see themselves going to pass-happy West Virginia.

Linebackers is another position being hit hard but that was to be expected and there is already one commit in Logan Thimons and potentially another in Jango Glackin, 6'2" 215 lbs. OLB from IMG Academy. One area where it would be nice to see some more offers is in the trenches. As of now the offensive and defensive lines make up about a quarter of the offers with a combined 44. That isn't terrible and there is definitely young talent on the roster developing right now, but it would be nice to lock up some talent early. Josh Ball is the top target for the OT position and he would be sorely needed talent. He is still weighing his options but WVU has been making inroads in Virginia lately and Ball could be the next player in line to come to Morgantown.

All in all WVU is off to a good start and likely about where we should be at this point in the year. Hopefully we can get a couple more high profile guys on board early as that can really help the growth of the class as a whole. All in all though, things are looking alright so far!