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So, it looks like Johnny Millard (Keith Millard's son) just committed to Cal Poly-SLO. We tripped him up last weekend and he was really excited about us. Unfortunately for Johnny, it's 2009 and not 2008. This is the type of kid we took several times over last year because of how late Wulff was to the game and how atrocious and negligent Doba was in recruiting. This year we simply have a ton of quality and less opportunity to speculate on "undiscovered" prospects. Lots of gripping about DT prospects (including myself) and it does look like Wulff is telling two guys in our class that they are going to come in as a DT so that makes me feel a little better. Clayton out of Cali has always been recruited as a DT but you can tuck that name away and forget about it for 3 years. He weighs 245 so unless he subscribes to the Matt Eichelberger school of gluttony he's gonna need a lot of time to put on at least 40-50 pounds to get up to Pac-10 weight.
I even wonder if he might be a grayshirt candidate to give him an extra year to hopefully come in at about 10-15 pounds heavier. It worked for Tim Hodgdon as he entered school this semester at about 310 pounds. Side note: Hodgdon has put on 25 pounds since signing day last year and with a redshirt year to learn technique he will immediately be the right size to play Pac10 football. The other guy is Quayshawn Buckley out of Cali. He played a lot of oline in high school so this should be an interesting switch. He's closer to playing weight ready at 270 pounds. Give him a redshirt and 20 pounds and you've got a 290 pound dtackle with four years of playing eligibility. Let's hope the staff has read him correctly and that he'll take to playing dtackle at the next level. We are officially in lockdown mode at this point with no contact with recruits through Signing Day (on Wednesday) for any staff out there. So, what must that feeling be like for each staff? You can't talk with anyone and you just have to sit and wait for the faxes to roll-in. The Rivals Northwest 100 came out today as well. It's basically a fantastic affirmation of how this staff evaluates talent. Any guesses on highest rated prospect committed to WSU? It's Travis Long of Spok at #17. Nolan Washington sits at #25 which is exactly TEN spots higher than Desmond Trufant. My feeling is that the part that hurts in losing Trufant is the fact that his last name is Trufant. The staff and even the recruiting services have clearly felt better about Washington for a long time now. To me, the most exciting indicator of this staff's willingness to work and effectively evaluate is the Jordan Pu-u Robinson case. We picked him up last month as an unevaluated prospect out of Hawaii that wasn't getting much coverage. Today he is the #54 prospect in the NW. The only way we get better is with a staff that is tireless in recruiting and stellar at evaluating the Forzani's and Robinson's of the world. It appears that this class could be a classic example of how we can compete. Everyone is crossing their fingers for a Bumpus sort of Signing Day surprise. At this point, I would just settle for no late de-commits from our class like Trey Henderson (who went USC at the last minute) or Brian Baucham (who went USC at the last minute) or Vincent Joseph (who went USC at the last minute)....sensing a theme here? For every surprise we get in our favor you can figure that a bigger school like SC comes in and vultures three of ours. Winning recruiting at WSU means holding your recruits late since we've spent more time recruiting that "second level" of prospect better than the SC's of the world. So, consider our surprise if all of our commits fax in their letters to CPW. Right now it looks like it's going to be a very nice day for us on Wednesday and then we can start to fixate on which kids will make grades for Fall.
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