Arizona football mailbag: Answering questions ahead of National Signing Day

It’s a somewhat busy week for the Arizona football program between the Wildcats finalizing first-year head coach Brent Brennan’s support staff along with National Signing Day on Wednesday.

We solicited questions from UA football fans on X (Twitter) earlier this week to address any topics regarding the program. Every question was answered on The Wildcast Podcast, which can be listened on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and viewed on Tucson.com.

Here are a few notable questions from the mailbag:

Any recruits on the horizon?

When Arizona inked its 2024 recruiting class in December, the Wildcats were ranked in the top half of the Big 12 rankings on 247Sports.com, but following a handful of recruits leaving the UA to follow Jedd Fisch and his staff to Washington, Arizona’s class now ranks last in the conference.

Between the transfer portal and players leaving the 2024 recruiting class, the Wildcats lost nine players to Washington, including starting running back Jonah Coleman and Ephesians Prysock. Players from Arizona’s recruiting class leaving for UW include four-star quarterback Demond Williams, Phoenix-area star running back Adam Mohammed, Indiana transfer cornerback Jordan Shaw and Las Vegas wide receiver Audric Harris.

While the Wildcats have talent across the board, Brennan and his staff need to address the depth at defensive line, cornerback and running back.

The Wildcats recently landed a commitment from former New Mexico running back and graduate transfer Jacory Merritt on Tuesday.

Known as Jacory Croskey-Merritt, the 5-11, 204-pound Montgomery, Alabama, native played four seasons at Alabama State before his lone season at New Mexico in 2023, when he rushed for 1,190 yards and 17 touchdowns under former head coach Danny Gonzales, who’s now the UA’s linebackers coach.

If the Wildcats miss out on four-star Seattle-area cornerback Rahshawn Clark, who will likely commit to Washington on Wednesday, the Huskies will have taken four cornerbacks away from Arizona’s ’24 class, along with Prysock, Shaw and L.A.-area product Rahim Wright. Starter Tacario Davis is still in the transfer portal, which closes for Arizona on Tuesday.

Since the Wildcats are in the market for a cornerback, they recently offered College of San Mateo’s Johno Price, who was offered by the UA on Saturday. The 6-2, 175-pound Price also holds offers from San Jose State and Bowling Green.

Wednesday could be a busy day for the Wildcats on the recruiting trail.

Arizona could also add players from the transfer portal that opens up in the spring, which is how it landed defensive end and sacks leader Taylor Upshaw, who is out of eligibility now, and wide receiver Montana Lemonious-Craig.

What kind of recruiting reputation does Brennan and Co. have?

Only time will tell how Brennan is as a recruiter at Arizona — and it’s a challenging exercise to judge him as a recruiter at San Jose State. The facilities, the resources, it’s a night-and-day difference at Arizona than at SJSU, which had one three-star commit in its last recruiting class under Brennan in 2023, per ESPN.com; the rest of the Spartans recruits weren’t ranked. SJSU’s 2023 recruiting class ranked ninth in the Mountain West on 247Sports.com.

Despite lower-ranked recruiting classes, the Spartans went 26-19 from 2020-23.

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Plus, Arizona running backs coach and Bay Area native Alonzo Carter was the 247Sports.com 2019 Mountain West Recruiter of the Year. Other members of Arizona’s staff and longtime connections along the West Coast, including defensive line coach Joe Seumalo, who coached at San Jose State, Arizona State, UNLV, Oregon State and Cal Poly.

Arizona wide receivers coach and former UA star Bobby Wade is a well-connected coach in the state between his time as an analyst at ASU along with coaching high school football in the Phoenix area.

Brennan told the Star when he was first hired that “recruiting is a relationship business.”

“If you’ve done right by the players on your roster, the players you’ve recruited in the past, if you’ve done right by the high school coaches where those players come from and there’s been healthy communication and have built years of trust, which I’ve done for 25 years, then it continues, and I think you can accelerate,” he said. “Even now, with our current roster, we’re going through that.

“Guys that have coached someone who is here, they’re calling me up like, ‘Hey, man, I’m with you on this. I’m helping you. I’m telling (the players) who you are, what you’re about and what kind of program you’re going to build.’ So they’re getting reinforcement from another source besides this guy they just met.

Why does Arizona only have a few incoming prospects in the portal?

All three of Arizona’s transfer portal additions between Merritt, Northwestern offensive lineman Alexander Doost, Tennessee safety Jack Luttrell and UC Davis defensive tackle Chubba Maae will all impact Arizona in some shape or form.

The only reason Arizona doesn’t have more now is because the only players Arizona can add are from teams who recently went through a coaching change, which opened up a 30-day transfer window. Arizona can add players from Washington, Alabama, Boston College and San Jose State, among others.

San Jose State running back Quali Conley could join Merritt in efforts to bolster Arizona’s running back group and follow Brennan and Carter to Tucson.

Conley, who entered the transfer portal following his junior season last month after Brennan’s departure to Arizona, finished seventh in the Mountain West with 842 yards and nine touchdowns this past season.

As previously stated, the spring window for the transfer portal will likely attract multiple players to Tucson.

Bonus: Will we see a basketball game outside at Arizona Stadium?

It may not draw as much as Nebraska’s record-setting 92,003 fans for a volleyball match at Memorial Stadium, but how neat would it be if Arizona Stadium had a double-header with the women’s and men’s teams against prominent opponents that would draw several spectators after the football team is done using the stadium for the year?

Who would say no to the Arizona women’s team facing Baylor before the UA men’s team faces Kansas?