Kendal Franklin, Ryan Dunn, Derrick Turituri, David Maka.
Anthony Fotu, Josh Allen, Timmy Hamilton, Sharif Williams.
Jerod Cody, Derek Babiash, Patrick Glover, David Price.
That’s 12 names, none of them are Wildcats. A few were — briefly — and a few others never actually enrolled. Some transferred, some fizzled, some disappeared.
Last year, Arizona’s defense struggled. Part of that was because of personnel: The Wildcats started two former walk-ons at linebacker and two converted receivers at cornerback. This season, Arizona’s defensive line rotation will heavily deploy two defensive linemen who barely weigh 250 pounds.
Poor performance on the field can be attributed to a lot of things — effort, schematics, attitude, coaching — but recruiting is often the culprit.
Rodriguez cleaned house in the offseason, firing Jeff Casteel as defensive coordinator, Bill Kirelawich as defensive line coach and David Lockwood as cornerbacks coach. Matt Caponi departed for West Virginia on his own accord.
In their stead, Rich Rodriguez brought in Marcel Yates from Boise State, Donté Williams from San Jose State and Jahmile Addae and Vince Amey from within.
Those 13 names? Those were recruits from the previous defensive staff, a recruiting résumé more littered with miscues than home runs .
The recruiting landscape has wildly shifted in recent years, with more of an emphasis on social media, satellite camps and constant contact than ever before. It’s a young man’s game.
Casteel, Kirelawich and Lockwood averaged 58 years in age.
Yates, Williams, Amey and Addae average 36.
“I think a lot of time coaches take, I don’t want to say a backseat, but they slow down with age in terms of being aggressive as they can be on the recruiting trail,” Addae said.
Rodriguez has long been a loyal compadre to his coaching brethren, but he had to make a decision — adapt or die.
Rodriguez chose the former.
“If you’re a position coach in college ball and you can’t have success recruiting, you won’t keep your job,” Rodriguez said. “It’s simple as that.”
Tops in the Pac
Arizona’s new staff was hired in January, one month before National Signing Day.
Between New Year’s Eve until Signing Day, 15 players either verbally committed to or decommitted from the UA. It was hectic, but all on paper — all recruiting, really, is on paper — and it turned out OK.
Things really started humming in March. Greg Johnson, the top-rated athlete in the West, announced his commitment to the Wildcats. The Scout.com recruiting service lists Johnson, a star at Los Angeles Augustus Hawkins High School, as a four-star recruit. Williams, the cornerbacks coach, targeted Johnson immediately after he was hired. His commitment could pay off even more in the future — the UA is a finalist to land Joseph Lewis, Johnson’s teammate and the top-rated receiver in the country.
This is a whole new world.
Between Johnson and now, the Wildcats have added 24 other commitments. It’s early, but Arizona has the top-rated class in the Pac-12.
Johnson, running back Nathan Tilford and quarterback Braxton Burmeister are all four-star recruits. Six are high-end three-star players. Beyond that, the Wildcats are front-runners for a handful of other high-level recruits, including Lewis and four-star cornerback Thomas Graham, a former USC commit.
“Everyone wants to be part of something special,” said Burmeister, a star quarterback at La Jolla Country Day School. “This is going to be something special, so it’s definitely a movement.”
So that begs the question: What’s changed?
Mapping it out
There’s long been this idea that in Southern California, USC gets first dibs on the high-level recruits, UCLA gets who the Trojans don’t reel in, and everyone else is left fighting for the leftovers.
Arizona had a tough enough time just fighting for the leftovers. Now, in more situations than in a long time, the Wildcats are competing with the Trojans and Bruins for some recruits.
Eleven of Arizona’s 26 verbal commitments in 2017 are from Southern California, and that comes from top-to-bottom effort by the Arizona’s staff.
Quarterbacks coach Rod Smith recruits San Diego. Williams and Yates, the defensive coordinator, focus intensely on the state. Analyst Miguel Reveles, a former coach in the Inland Empire, has helped Amey in the Bay Area.
“Recruiting here, everybody looks at it like it’s only one guy or two guys or three guys, but that’s not how you succeed when it comes to recruiting,” Williams said. “You succeed because it’s a group effort, it’s everybody buying in. It’s not just the full-time guys, it’s the GAs, it’s the analysts, it’s everybody from the top down.”
Recruiting the future
Both recruiting director Chris Singletary and Smith have been around Rodriguez for a long time. Rodriguez recruited Smith as a quarterback to Glenville State during Rodriguez’s first-ever coaching job, and Singletary was his recruiting coordinator at Michigan.
This, on the surface, renewed effort in recruiting isn’t exactly a new development.
“He’s always had an eye for it,” Smith said. “He’s had an eye for finding talent, for finding guys who could fit what he wants to do, and I think that’s been evident throughout his career.”
Added Singletary: “Anytime you get a chance to work with coach Rod, one thing you learn is that he’s all-in on recruiting. He wants the best players, he don’t care where they’re from, he don’t care what they’re ranked, it’s about the fit.”
In that sense, the fit wasn’t working with the last staff. Every year, Rodriguez looks back at past recruiting classes, how those players panned out, how the two-deep on the depth chart looks in relation to the respective classes.
He didn’t like what he saw this time, so he made changes.
“That’s part of the evaluation I have every year. Including this year. What do I have on the two-deep? Who’s recruiting on staff? What can I do better as a head coach?” Rodriguez said. “It’s approach-wise and some of the ways we were doing recruiting. It wasn’t just the defensive staff, it was myself and the rest of the staff, too, had to make some tweaks, and we did, and it’s paying off so far.”
