Prater was highly touted coming out of high school, but he was also very raw as a passer. I watched a number of his high school games here in Cincy. He fit the mold of a Dez Ridder type that was going to need some work. I’m guessing they’re bringing Bryant back because they don’t have a ton of confidence in what they’ve seen from Prater so far.
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Hopefully neither performs well and we can benefit from that
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Washington State QB Jayden De Laura entered the portal today, the last day to withdraw before WSU’s new semester.
Man CMU sent him packing
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The coach who recruited him to Wazzu (Leach) was gone before he ever set foot on campus. By sheer coincidence, Leach’s successor had also recruited de Laura, back when Rolovich was the head coach at Hawaii (de Laura is from Honolulu). But the people he had relationships with are gone.
And then there’s the matter of the new OC, Eric Morris. Morris was the head coach at 1-AA Incarnate Word, and he’s widely thought to be bringing along his star quarterback, All-American Cameron Ward. (Ward has offers from a bunch of P5 schools, including Wazzu.)
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Akron now up to four transfers coming in. With Moorhead’s later hire guess he is using the portal for his recruiting this year since they only signed two guys in the early period.
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He had a good year at WSU but not having that stud running back in the bowl game really cost him.
The Akron area kid they picked up from UCLA looks like a real find.
I believe the kid from UCLA went to Kent not Akron
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Redhawk16 is absolutely right. Prater on very thin ice at UC. Not at all happy with his passing ability. The same family member on UC’s team who told me back before T/Giving that Pace was headed to USucks told me they’re not happy with Prater. Saw him beat that member about four or five different times between regular high school season and playoff games. Prater has some real scoots but passing was never a big part of what he needed to do to win at Wyoming H.S. in suburban Cincy.
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Is attractions offering free quarter-beers to recruits to come to Oxford?
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Central’s Troy Brown to Ole Miss and Devonni Reed to South Carolina.
Buffalo QB Vantrease to Georgia Southern. Bulls are Portal U in the MAC - 19 outbound and so far 3 inbound.
Moorhead seems to be collecting several decent players at Akron through the portal. It looks like that’s the new route to try to jump start a failing program.
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This is what the Illinois coach Underwood did in hoops at his old school. If you are a good talent finder and can quickly mold unknown pieces into a cohesive unit, it’s a darn good way to instantly improve.
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That’s how Mel Tucker engineered Michigan State’s jump from mediocre to decent in one season. It is quickly becoming the principle recruiting mechanism for rebuilding programs quickly.
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19 out and 3 in seems like a bad recipe for maintaining a proper program in the near future.
It’s very obviously a house cleaning, MUHawk.
Much easier to do now with the existence of the portal. He’ll fill that 16 player gap through inbound transfers and high school recruits. I’m guessing it’s going to look like this now every time a new coaching staff is brought in. A few kids will bolt through the portal immediately and a few more will be invited to jump in after the new coach’s first season.
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Keep in mind that UB’s coach took over very, very late in the cycle last year after Leipold left for KU (in April if I recall) so he was basically stuck with the roster he inherited. They might be in turmoil after all, but even if they’re not some level of turnover is to be expected now that their staff has more of a chance to shape the program.
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It sounds like what SEC schools would do (and Tucker has a SEC background) before the transfer portal: run kids off early they didn’t think would contribute. The only difference now is that a transfer portal exists and they can play right away instead of sitting out a year. This seems like it would be easy to recruit against: “Does he really want you? Look how many are going in the portal every year. Come here where we’ll give you a real chance to develop and not give up on you after a year.”
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I think you’ve hit on a great counter argument for high school recruiting. What are we going to say about recruited kids jumping out at first chance to P5 programs? Do we use that as a recruiting tool and basically admit we are not a destination program - but a developmental one. Is our long-term value going to be based on how many kids we can quickly jump to P5 programs? It’s a strange new world.