Texas Tech Football | January Recruiting Update

We're about three weeks away from National Signing Day (NSD), which is February 1, 2012.

De-Commits Happen Everywhere

I'm not trying to make light of the fact that Texas Tech has had three de-commitments that Texas Tech has had, which would include OL Halapoulivaati Vaitai, WR Marcus Johnson and OL Christian Okafor. Again, I wish that these players would have chosen Texas Tech, but it's nothing to get upset about (in terms of disliking those high school kids for making a commitment and then backing out of it, as they are allowed to change their mind until NSD) but it happens everywhere.

DB DeVante Harris de-committed from Oklahoma, and was apparently OU's highest rated defensive player. WR Thomas Johnson de-committed from Texas, and is the #32 player in the country. This isn't an opportunity for me to make light of their situations, which is why I don't make too big a deal out of these sorts of things, but maybe I should as I think these sorts of things generate a lot of traffic. Either way, the truth of the matter is that it happens to just about every school and it just isn't something that happens to Texas Tech.

These kids are making huge decisions that will affect their lives for at least a year, hopefully 5 years, and they need to feel 100% comfortable with that decision, so you won't ever hear me bemoan a player changing on signing day or prior to signing day or you won't hear me celebrate too loudly if a player switches a commit to Texas Tech in the last minute.

Where Is The Defensive Coordinator?

This topic has dropped off a bit as Texas Tech is going a couple of weeks without a defensive coordinator. Everything that I've read and heard says that the job is Art Kaufman's, the former defensive coordinator at North Carolina, so what's the hold up? I started to think that this may be a situation similar to when Billy Clyde Gillispie was rumored to be the only candidate at Texas Tech, but there appeared to be a week or so delay between when he was rumored to be the only candidate and when he was actually hired. That time-frame may have actually been longer, but the point is that there was a delay. Because Gillispie had not been formally retained, it allowed him to visit possible commits and recruits without any sort of worry about a recruiting violation.

I don't know if this benefits head coach Tommy Tuberville in that without a coordinator it permits him to make more visits or if it also permits Kaufman to make visits with players, like Gillispie, without the problem of the number of visits limited. I think it's just something to consider, and while we may be concerned that a defensive coordinator hasn't been named, the move may be intentional and it may benefit Texas Tech.

Rankings Updates

Whenever I did the profiles for all of the JUCO's that committed, 24/7 Sports was the one site that was lagging a bit in rating some of the players and didn't even have profiles for some of them. Well, that's been fixed an so the sidebar is completely updated in terms of rankings and and the cumulative average. Guys like WR Sadale Foster, FS Austin Stewart and CB Bruce Jones either got graded or profiles with 24/7 Sports. Surprisingly, Foster is given a relatively high grade, 3-star and 85, as he was generally regarded as a 2-star player by Rivals and Scout. Just something to think about.

Also, CB Thierry Nguema was given a profile by 24/7 Sports and have given him a 2-star rating and grade.

The recruiting data can be found here on the Google.

Green Out? Whatever Happened to Hartsfield?

I trust what RRS.com does and they've removed DE Desimon Green from the commitment list. When I did this on Friday morning, the cumulative average only went down 0.3, which may or may not be a big deal. I'm still trying to figure out if that is significant. In any event, from what I've heard, this may be a grade issue with Green, who initially didn't qualify coming out of high school, so he went to Hargrave Military Academy, and he may be going to JUCO due to those grades. I'm not sure, but either way, I took him off DTN's list.

Remember LB Terrell Hartsfield? I do too, but I haven't heard anything about him. I think what happened is that Hartsfield originally attended Hargrave and then ended up going to Copiah-Lincoln C.C. where he registered 67 tackles, 8 sacks and 2 forced fumbles this past year. I couldn't find anything recently that even seems to indicate that Hartsfield is still on the radar and I somewhat thought that Hartsfield was going to just go a year at JUCO since he had already spent a year at Hargrave. This may be a situation where Hartsfield still has to qualify, or may have problems qualifying. Hartsfield was named to the MACJC First Team All-State team. I'd love for this to be one of those things that we don't think about, but is a talented player and Prunty is still keeping in contact Hartsfield.

Who Else is on the Radar?

This is a little bit quirky, but I think that JUCO RB Damien Williams has a visit scheduled for later this month. ESPN says that Williams has a visit scheduled on January 27, 2011, but I think that's off a year as Scout says that Williams has a visit scheduled for January 24, 2012. With the injuries to Eric Stephens and DeAndre Washington, the graduation of Aaron Crawford and the question mark that is Ronnie Daniels, this is somewhat of a need as the only healthy scholarship running back going into the spring is Kenny Williams. There was some thought that Sadale Foster could also work in at running back, but an actual running back that has the opportunity to compete for some carries. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Daniels eventually works his way back onto the team and I even think he practices during the spring, but he'll be on thin ice from this point forward.

Since I don't have any inside information or any sort of subscription based service, the only way that I know how to do this is to take a look at the offer list for ESPN, 24/7 Sports and Scout. I couldn't find any sort of similar function for Rivals, which is why I didn't include that site. I ended up going with the 24/7 Sports site to narrow down the results. The Scout site gives you six pages or so of possibilities and I think that most players have narrowed their college choices, i.e. at the very least players have narrowed their radars. The ESPN site also isn't really keeping track of who is really wanting to choose Texas Tech and who has Texas Tech made an offer.

So here's the list:

RB Damien Williams (6-0/205 Arizona W. C.C.)
ATH Todd Mays (6-0/200 Olive Branch, MS)
TE Justin Chandler (6-3/225 Kingwood, TX)
CB Joseph McClary (5-8/163 St. Thomas Aquinas, FL)
S Brandon Butler (6-1/180 Boyd Anderson, FL)
CB Cameron Cole (6-1/195 Fort Scott, C.C.)
WR De'Joshua Johnson (5-10/165 Arizona W. C.C.)
CB Tony Grimes (5-11/180 Arizona W. C.C.)
DT Jarran Reed (6-4/295 Hargrave M.A.)
RB Robert Lewis (5-9/155 South Gate, CA)

There are a couple of things to remember. This list is totally unofficial and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if none of these players, except for maybe Williams and Mays didn't have legitimate offers. In fact, if you look at Reed and Chandler's pages from Rivals, they aren't rated and have zero offers.

So what I did, is take a look at the 24/7 Sports link and find the kids that they report as having a semblance of interest in Texas Tech. I didn't list any interest in any player that was already committed to another school or had "cool" or no interest.

Not knowing anything about Chandler, I'd love to how or why there haven't been more effort to snag a tight end, but I'd also say that if there is a position that doesn't warrant a significant offer, i.e. there's little talent at the tight end spot for the year, then that offer and scholarship spot is better spent somewhere else.

Lots of defensive back types and I don't know how accurate that is because I really think that when the staff signed or received commits from CB Bruce Jones, FS Austin Stewart, LB/S Chris Payne and CB Theirry Nguema, I think the staff is pretty much done with the secondary.

I don't think there is some sort of huge prospect out there, like Delvon Simmons and Branden Jackson last year. I'd also guess that there are some prospects out there that aren't going to be on any recruiting services' radars due to the fact that there is a new defensive staff, except for Prunty, and those coaches may have some thoughts about where a player is leaning for the coach's former school.

If you can find any information, feel free to post it. I did find this tweet and photo of DL coach Terry Price with looks like a defensive lineman that uses the Twitter handle 2womenplusKB. That's all I've got.

I'm also posting the recruiting table after the jump.