Wannstedt announces recruiting class

There’s a principle Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt remembered from old Pitt coaches Jackie… There’s a principle Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt remembered from old Pitt coaches Jackie Sherrill and Johnny Majors that he used in recruiting players for this year’s class. Call it the five-hour rule, and the reception in New Jersey was the warmest. ‘I remember them saying, ‘OK, let’s look at a five-hour drive a parent could make from the Cathedral,’ said Wannstedt, who announced next year’s Pitt football recruiting class yesterday afternoon. ‘New Jersey is an area where they play good football, and it’s Big East country. It makes sense to get up and recruit there.’ It clicked the most with Pitt defensive backs coach Jeff Hafley, who helped Pitt sign five of its 20-player recruiting class from New Jersey. Hafley, a former Pitt graduate assistant in his first year as a full-time assistant, is from New Jersey and hit his home state hard starting last spring. ‘I just went from school to school every day to show my face, meet people and get Pitt and get myself back in there,’ said Hafley. ‘That was my goal, to lay the foundation of what’s to come. The reception I received was unbelievable.’ Not that Pitt hasn’t gotten players from New Jersey in the past ‘mdash; former NFL players Chris Doleman, Craig ‘Ironhead’ Heyward and current Arizona Cardinals linebacker Gerald Hayes all came to Pitt from New Jersey. But this year’s class includes five from the Garden State, the most since the mid 1980s, and is headlined by Rivals.com four-star running back Raymond Graham from Elizabeth. Still, though, Pitt continued its in-state recruiting presence. Ten of the 20 players to sign letters of intent yesterday played high school football in Pennsylvania, and six of those players played in the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League (WPIAL).’ One player, Ed Tinker, played for Brashear of the Pittsburgh City League two years ago before playing one year of prep school at North Carolina Tech to qualify academically. ‘Eddie Tinker, we had him over here at a passing camp [two years ago], and I saw that kid make some plays,’ said Wannstedt. ‘I said, ‘We want you at Pitt.’ So he’ll be back with us.’ Overall, this year’s class includes four four-star recruits, according to Rivals.com ‘mdash; linebacker Dan Mason from Penn Hills, receiver Todd Thomas from Beaver Falls, defensive lineman Jack Lippert from Harrisburg and Graham. National recruiting analyst Tom Lemming also named four members of this year’s class as all-Americans: Tyrone Ezell from Steel Valley, Thomas Jefferson’s Brock DeCicco (brother of Pitt safety Dom DeCicco), Lippert and Thomas, who was selected to the Associated Press all-state team three years in a row at three different positions ‘mdash; receiver, running back and defensive back. ‘Todd Thomas might be the best all-around athlete in the state,’ said Wannstedt. ‘You make all-state in Pa. at three different positions, we’ll start him off at wide receiver, but who knows where he’ll end up.’ Wannstedt said he used this year’s scholarships to both help positions of need and build depth. Seven of the 20 scholarships awarded to this year’s players were used on the offensive and defensive lines, one to offensive lineman Juantez Hollins to keep Pitt’s Aliquippa pipeline open. Three more were each used on receivers and linebackers, and another three on running backs to help make up for the losses of LaRod Stephens-Howling and Conredge Collins to graduation and LeSean McCoy to the NFL. ‘If you talk to the running backs that we signed, all three would tell you that in the conversations they’ve had with me, one of the facts that we talked about was that we felt there was a strong possibility that LeSean could leave. We signed three tailbacks, and they were all signed early.’ Pitt also signed two projected defensive backs, Kevin Adams and Jason Hendricks, one tight end, DeCicco, and one quarterback, Kolby Gray from Texas, a dual-threat product of defensive coordinator Phil Bennett’s history in Texas. More important to Wannstedt, though, is Gray’s ability to both run and pass, which is something Wannstedt said the Pitt program needed. ‘This class fills a lot of needs that we had,’ he said. ‘And take into account that five out of nine assistant coaches were new to our staff that jumped into new recruiting areas … with some high school coaches that was the first time they were meeting them. Overall I think we did a fantastic job.’