Here's another installment of the Recruiting Round-Up here at Streaking the Lawn. We've been off for a couple weeks, so here's a recap of what's been happening over the past few weeks on the trail.
Virginia snags 2 commitments
In recent weeks UVA has grabbed two verbal commitments for 2013, first from Houston Defensive Back Hipolito Corporan, and the second from North Carolina native and Linebacker LaChaston Smith. Corporan was pretty off the radar when he committed to the Cavaliers, but his film shows that he has some real talent. His recruitment will be interesting to track, as he has never been to Charlottesville, and could receive some new offers that intrigue him as signing day draws closer. Smith was a big time target for UVA, and Linebacker is Virginia's biggest area of need. If Smith were 6'1'' instead of 5'11'', he would be a sure-fire 4-star prospect, just based off his film and offers. Having said that, he does still have a chance to get a bump in the rankings with solid play in his senior season.
Plenty of Virginia targets in updated Rivals Top 100
There are a bunch of UVA targets in the new Rivals Top 100, which came out last week. UVA doesn't have any commits in the top 100 at this point (Tim Harris is at 161), but currently uncommitted targets Taquan Mizzell (43), Larenz Bryant (56), Wyatt Teller (75), Peter Kamabayi (80) and Doug Randolph (86) are among the top 100 in the nation. 247's rankings for each of these guys are a little different, but they are all ranked around the same area. UVA feels very good about Mizzell, Teller and Kalambayi. Randolph is currently committed to Stanford, but UVA and Notre Dame remained involved. As for Bryant, he may be harder to pull in the long run, but he did recently name Virginia as his leader, over schools like Clemson, Florida, Alabama, etc.
New Recruiting feature on Streaking the Lawn
This week Brian and myself compiled and created a tool for tracking UVA's 2013 class, by viewing a comprehensive list of all the prospects the Cavaliers are pursuing this cycle. If you click on the logo for the 2013 Big Board on the right hand side of the STL page (about half-way down), it will take you to the latest edition of the Big Board. There you will find about 100 targets UVA has for this cycle, their heights and weights, where they are from, their rankings, and if their current recruiting status. Because of the nature of this tool, we can't update it every day, or every time a prospect changes their top 5. I'll try to stay as on top of it as I can throughout the following months leading up to signing day, and I hope you find it useful.
Running out of Space?
With the recent commitments of Corporan and Smith, Virginia is up to 9 pledges for the 2013 class. Most feel that UVA will end up with about 20 signees in February, so that leaves the Cavaliers with only 11 or so spots remaining for this recruiting class. This could mean that Virginia will have a big run on commitments soon, once one or two guys jump on board. When that happens, it will be evident to many UVA targets that space is filling up (the staff will make this known to them too of course), and could create a domino effect where a group of prospects that are high on Virginia pull the trigger to secure their spot. When will that happen? We'll see. But it could be sooner rather than later.
Committed Elsewhere:
Jonathan Allen (Alabama), Maurice Hurst Jr. (Michigan), Henry Poggi (Michigan), Matt Rolin (South Carolina), Chavas Rawlins (West Virginia), Arshad Jackson (Auburn), Darius Commissiong (Georgia Tech)