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Football Recruiting

UTEPDefense said:
Just a few random recruiting thoughts:

- Last year, without posting any names, our new coaching staff was always quick to post gif’s when almost every new recruit committed. When a WR committed, one coach would post a fighter jet plane taking off and say something like “added a new member to the flight squad.” When an O-lineman committed, a coach would post a gif of a moster truck or a tractor pull. Now this year, they have done nothing like this. Why such a complete opposite change from one year to the next?

- There is a guy on twitter named Angel Luna, who has titled himself as “Recruiting Expert” for utep.rivals, but so far for this recruiting class he has not posted any commit information in advance and has only tweeted/retweeted after a recruit has publicly committed, he has not posted any interviews with any commits/recruits, and he has not even posted any information about which recruits visited during a specific weekend. One would expect that a person titled “recruiting expert”, would post a list about which recruits were visiting, post about who was confirmed as coming in during the next weekend for a visit, reach out to some recruits after commitment and post some comments about why they committed to UTEP, or just simply have any type of inside recruiting information?

- From the pics this past weekend, here is what I have been able to piece together; it looks like we had at least 6 visitors in this past weekend. Cousins(CB), Mayers(OL), and Joseph(RB), were 3 of them. Based on body type, the other 3 kids could have possibly been a WR?, DE?, and LB?

- WR commit AJ Carter visited Utah State this past weekend. If I was to guess, then I would say that he will possibly visit Southern Miss and UTEP over the next two weekends.
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Carter does seem to be shopping around quite a bit. Hope he ends up sticking with his verbal commitment to UTEP but I will not be surprised if he goes elsewhere. One good thing about his trip this past weekend to USU is that it was cold with some snow. Hopefully he didn't like that.
 
HeWore62 said:
Need more help here, neighbors: How does a private school recruit? How is it done, with the scouting and "scholarship dollars" required? Who pays the freight?

Oh, and "social engineering"? Sheer foolishness. I could provide a total rebuttal, front to back, top to bottom, but I'm a little busy these days, creating the next "Miners Are Forever" newsletter.

Actually, I am scrapping my old, traditional newspaper-style layout for a series of quick-hitting blogs. This way, your busy thumbs may scroll your hand-held devices with ease.
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I dont know about there but the school either pays for the kid to attend or they get a donor to do it. We have a school in Dllas that has been so bad about it that the UIL and the Private school folks had to ban transfers to this school. None of these parents have paid a penny. If your kid is good they can get a top notch education.
 
Damn!! Looks like we lost a good one, off of one play too. Smh. Guess the optimistic part is that we've got a good eye for talent before everyone else boards the ship and steals em
 
We’ve dropped to the 134th class behind Kennasaw St. They have more three star recruits than us.

Kugler’s worst class was rated 133. Unless something changes in the next few days we continue to go backwards.
 
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UTEPDefense said:
Regarding AJ Carter, I honestly don’t think that this is too big of a loss. I have been putting hints out there for a while now indicating that he is not the type of WR that a lot of people on this board thought he was. I know that his high school team was stacked, but he was not even a top 3 receiving option on his own high school team. He would post a new HUDL video after each game, yet 80% of the highlights would be him just blocking because he never had more than 1 or 2 receptions per game. I then watched him play the entire state championship game and I saw the reason why he never put up any stats. Everybody then got excited because he caught the game winning hail mary in the state championship, but if you watched the entire game, then you saw he only had 1 other catch during that entire game for only 7 yards. He often jogged off the line of scrimmage on running plays and then he got alligator arms and couldn’t catch his 2 other pass attempts. He did not look like a 3 star WR. Even Bigwood brought up the point when he first committed, that it was odd that a 3 star receiver had no film out there. He might have some physical potential, but he is not a player that would come in and have an immediate impact. I also listened to a podcast interview with him early in the season and I wasn’t impressed during that interview either, plus his answer as to why he committed to UTEP wasn’t very convincing.

Also, during the post game interview after the state championship, they were interviewing one of AJ’s teammates and when asked about the hailmary, AJ’s teammate mentioned how proud he was of AJ for continuing to keep his head up and make that big play after having so many drops this season. He said this as a compliment and he even stated that AJ had been spending extra time after practice working on catching. But that is not a good sign, when a 3 star WR apparently has such a big drop problem, that one of teammates has to give him credit for persevering through it.

My only negative thought towards the situation is that it is not the best look for him to commit to UTEP for many months and then decommit without ever even taking a visit here. He is obviously setting up his 3 visits now and one could say that he probably owed it to UTEP to at least give UTEP 1 of his 3 weekend visits since we were one of the very first schools to offer him, plus he committed, and then he remained a commitment for many months. Again that doesn’t tie him to us, but he probably owed it to the coaching staff to at least give them 1 of his 3 visits after all of these months that they spent with him. Since his high school team kept winning in the play-offs, he never got the chance to visit UTEP before the early signing period, then he made 1 hail mary play combined with a questionable 3 star grade and suddenly other schools came on board and he is more than ready to move on without even visiting the school that he was committed to.

I could be wrong, but I think not getting Lyles is a bigger loss than Carter. I know that none of this answers the major question that we are still in need of some WR’s. I think that Workman is a decent prospect but he is probably going to need a year or two to develop. Dimel and staff seem to be putting some decent rebuilding pieces in place, but some WR play makers are still in major need and let’s hope that some new WR prospects pop up in the next two weeks.
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Don't forget we signed 2 3-star Wr last year in a class with 4 WR's. We also redshirted Walter Dawn.
 
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I mentioned him a few months ago on this thread, but a guy that really looks great on Senior Year film is Tupua, he was also our very first commit this year. I am somewhat surprised that he has apparently not picked up any new offers lately. He had 72 tackles this year, 23 tackles for loss, and 14 sacks from mostly a DT position! He is a terror on film and he was still getting sacks 7 minutes into his highlight video......which is almost unheard of for a DT. He’s physical, he’s quick, he uses his hands well, and he even has some closing speed. He played guard earlier in his career and based on that video he was just as violent when he was on that side of the ball as well. I don’t understand how such a productive and impressive player like him is not blowing up in recruiting? I am glad that this is the case for us, but I feel like I must be missing something? I am wondering if he might be smaller than listed and people are worried that he can’t play DT at the D1 level? Even if that is the case, in this day of spread football, it might not hurt as much to have a smaller but quicker DL.

Regardless, I hope that his name appears as a signee for us in two weeks.

 
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UTEPDefense said:
Regarding AJ Carter, I honestly don’t think that this is too big of a loss. I have been putting hints out there for a while now indicating that he is not the type of WR that a lot of people on this board thought he was. I know that his high school team was stacked, but he was not even a top 3 receiving option on his own high school team. He would post a new HUDL video after each game, yet 80% of the highlights would be him just blocking because he never had more than 1 or 2 receptions per game. I then watched him play the entire state championship game and I saw the reason why he never put up any stats. Everybody then got excited because he caught the game winning hail mary in the state championship, but if you watched the entire game, then you saw he only had 1 other catch during that entire game for only 7 yards. He often jogged off the line of scrimmage on running plays and then he got alligator arms and couldn’t catch his 2 other pass attempts. He did not look like a 3 star WR. Even Bigwood brought up the point when he first committed, that it was odd that a 3 star receiver had no film out there. He might have some physical potential, but he is not a player that would come in and have an immediate impact. I also listened to a podcast interview with him early in the season and I wasn’t impressed during that interview either, plus his answer as to why he committed to UTEP wasn’t very convincing.

Also, during the post game interview after the state championship, they were interviewing one of AJ’s teammates and when asked about the hailmary, AJ’s teammate mentioned how proud he was of AJ for continuing to keep his head up and make that big play after having so many drops this season. He said this as a compliment and he even stated that AJ had been spending extra time after practice working on catching. But that is not a good sign, when a 3 star WR apparently has such a big drop problem, that one of teammates has to give him credit for persevering through it.

My only negative thought towards the situation is that it is not the best look for him to commit to UTEP for many months and then decommit without ever even taking a visit here. He is obviously setting up his 3 visits now and one could say that he probably owed it to UTEP to at least give UTEP 1 of his 3 weekend visits since we were one of the very first schools to offer him, plus he committed, and then he remained a commitment for many months. Again that doesn’t tie him to us, but he probably owed it to the coaching staff to at least give them 1 of his 3 visits after all of these months that they spent with him. Since his high school team kept winning in the play-offs, he never got the chance to visit UTEP before the early signing period, then he made 1 hail mary play combined with a questionable 3 star grade and suddenly other schools came on board and he is more than ready to move on without even visiting the school that he was committed to.

I could be wrong, but I think not getting Lyles is a bigger loss than Carter. I know that none of this answers the major question that we are still in need of some WR’s. I think that Workman is a decent prospect but he is probably going to need a year or two to develop. Dimel and staff seem to be putting some decent rebuilding pieces in place, but some WR play makers are still in major need and let’s hope that some new WR prospects pop up in the next two weeks.
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Slot receivers with playmaking ability are Dawn, Foster at least and downfield WR should be good with Garrett, Busey and rs freshmen that need to develop quickly like Nwachukwu and Patrick. Some good receivers on the team already and now we will see if the coaches are capable.

I agree that Carter should have, and still could, visited UTEP to be fair and recruits are allowed 5 official visits. He took one so far that he tweeted about to USU. He also had an in home visit from the wr coach at USM. Those are the only 2 new offers that have been published on twitter and I don't see why either would be head and shoulders above his UTEP offer. Better football right now but they are not next level type programs imho.
 
Minerforlife said:
Dimel has taken a beating on the recruiting trail the last few weeks. Its as bad a stretch as a UTEP football coach has ever had, and that's saying something. Hopefully he can stem the tide.
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I agree with you MinerForLife!!! Lets give this coaching staff some time and lets trust the process. We all know how hard it is to recruit to el paso. Our football coaches have one of the hardest jobs in america in recruiting talent. Who would want to come here to play at UTEP with so many loosing seasons. If these coaches can start a winning tradition here at UTEP, then we can have a shot at some of these high profile players. I think our coaches are evaluating good talent and doing a hell of a job recruiting, considering that we have not had any winning seasons here at UTEP.
 
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I was looking on 247 at some of our previous recruiting classes. Nord and Price were both able to bring in high rated classes. In 2000 we had the 44th best class in the country. That’s probably the best class UTEP has ever had. It was done by a first year HC. In 2001 51st.

In 2005 Price brought in a class rated 71st. 2006 69th. In 2010 85th.

We say the program was left as a dumpster fire for Dimel but Nord didn’t exactly inherit a powerhouse. UTEP had not had a winning season in 11 years and averaged 2.72 wins per season during that span.

Both a rookie coach and an established coach have shown that kids will come and play in the Sun Bowl.

Here we go again with the “next year” crap but I really do hope that next year Dimel can a recruit a class that is not rated last in conference and last in FBS behind some FCS schools.
 
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What's disturbing is every time a new school enters the D-1 football market, it immediately pushes utep further down the rankings. We can't even stay up with schools starting up programs. We just don't have the population density to help with recruiting.
 
The lie of game film is what it does NOT show you. But from what one can see, this Big Uno cat is the kind of kid that vaulted TCU defense to the front row. Gary Patterson recruits tall, fast QBs and such. Those who outgrow their position move to LB and DE where they wreak havoc.

If this still-newish UTEP staff under Dimel can land the kind of athlete I just saw on tape, we Miners will climb into the sunshine..
 
Another commitment.



I know we gave Dimel a hard time for waiting until February to announce the class but I understand now. We’ve gained a lot of new late signatures.

#TEAM

 
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