More January Tidbits

Congratulations to former Buff Anthony Perkins, who was hired by Mike Sanford and Brian Cabral to coach the secondary at Indiana St. I am glad to hear he is getting this opportunity because he was supposedly a great coach when he was injured for much of his senior year, then passed up an offer to be a graduate assistant at Stanford to take a (long) shot at the NFL.  Go Sycamores!  (That’s a little weird-I wonder what they actually say?!)

Pacific Takes polled its bloggers on who was the better hire in the conference this year?  More of them liked Sonny Dykes at Cal a little better (as did the AD in Berkeley as she had first choice between the two), although nobody disliked the hiring of MacIntyre here. http://www.pacifictakes.com/pac-12-football/2013/1/22/3881936/colorado-buffaloes-mike-macintyre-cal-bears-sonny-dykes-football

At least we don’t have crazy freaking Mike Leach, who just reneged on a Washington St. scholarship offer to DB Myron Turner, barely two weeks away from signing day.  Turner had been committed to WSU since October and had supposedly rebuffed other schools.  Leach had even been at DeSoto high school recently and mentioned nothing of the possibility, only calling just this week to inform the kid that the school is going with a bigger guy. Hence, Leach and Washington St. have been banned from visiting the Texas powerhouse by coach Claude Mathis. Get on that MacIntyre!

CU Recruiting: Assuming there are no surprises, this will be the first time since 2002 that CU will not even host a “blue chip” (four or five star) prospect. ESPN listed its 50 or so best left uncommitted prospects and the Buffs are not in play for any of them.

However, one interesting news item to watch is that former four-star offensive line prospect 

Joey O’Connor (Windsor, CO) is transferring from Ohio St. to be closer to home, with the three schools most likely to be considered Wyoming, CU and csu.  O’Connor originally committed to Penn St. before all heck broke loose there, then redshirted after knee surgery and had a difficult freshmen year at Ohio St. last season.  Wherever he goes, unless he steps down a level, he would have to sit out a year as a transfer. MacIntyre needs to move on this yesterday.

Damon Sayles, of ESPN’s “RecruitingNation” said that Colorado’s list of commitments gives them “a decent nucleus of players with which to build. Twelve of the 15 players are three-star athletes or better, including four-star quarterback Sefo Liufau (Tacoma, Wash./Bellarmine), who has a chance of being the face of the program in a couple of years.” [*NOTE: ESPN is only place to rate Liufau as 4-stars, and just barely.] 

Sayles emphasized that the Buffs still need more help on the defensive line (in part to replace Kisima Jagne) to bulk up more on the inside, where you can really never have too many big bodies.  He mentioned two possible prospects CU is still coveting, the first of which was a new name to me: “Three-star defensive tackle DeOnte Reynolds (Pinole, Calif./Pinole Valley) is still on the board, as is defensive end Fred Melifonwu (San Diego/Abraham Lincoln). Reynolds has the size at 6-foot-4 and 314 pounds, and Melifonwu, at 6-5 and 215 pounds, is quick and agile. They could be the right kind of players in a Pac-12 defense.”

WR Coach Troy Walters is on the road recruiting, having left the cold of Detroit (probably to talk to Josh Jones) for Houston, Texas, where he could be meeting with any number of players as well as meeting high school coaches about next year’s prospects. He tweeted from Houston: “Ran into Alabama n Nebraska coaches. I must be on the right trail.”

Current offensive line prospect and verbal commit Colin Sutton told Adam M. at Rivals that he never wavered in his commitment to Colorado.

CU reportedly offered a scholarship to Ath. James Ooten if he would greyshirt and delay enrollment until next January. He will have to decide if he wants to start in August at New Mexico State, or wait a little while longer to play in the Pac-12.

San Jose, CA CB prospect Chidobe Awuzie had an in-home visit Wednesday night and it was hoped he would commit then.

La Mesa, CA RB Michael Adkins was supposedly deciding this week between CU and Air Force.

S Josh Jones (Michigan) is visiting NC State this weekend, and then will choose between CU, Pitt and the Wolfpack.

The only scheduled visitor the last two weekends is Rifle RB Ryan Moeller who will decide if he wants to take a scholarship at a smaller school somewhere else in Colorado or become a preferred walk-on at CU.

Not sure if it is worth writing but WR Austin Vincent, who was suspended for entering a girls dorm shower, has re-enrolled at CU and will walk-on in the spring.  I hope he can take some shit from the boys.

It is interesting that MacIntyre is receiving more praise than not for his bottom of the conference recruiting class, with the main thing he’s accomplished is convince Embree’s recruits to stay.  He and his staff have only gained one guy who grayshirted at San Jose State, along with one new verbal (neither of whom rate more than two stars and weren’t really on anyone else’s radar); all this while losing highly ranked three-star greyshirt DE Kisima Jagne, who by all indications would have stayed along with Embree. The math doesn’t add up in this area.

One of Embree’s biggest criticisms was that recruiting was suffering, especially this year.  However, let’s look at the facts: 1) when Embree took over for hawkins, he inherited only four commits (and he only kept two of those), but still put together a decent class, flipping six guys who had committed to other schools, including one four-star (although Paulay Asiata has since left the program) very late in the process; 2) this first group vastly was improved upon what he was given, and was much better than the previous year’s group; 3) then the staff followed that up with a nationally recognized group, snagging two 4-star corners late in the process with Kenneth Crawley and Yuri Wright, and ended up with a 35^th ranked class nationally; 4) they improved upon the previous year’s group both times, with a lot of the reward coming in late January, showing that Embree (and Bienemy among others) were closers and would have likely snared a surprise or two at the end again this year; 5) the only de-commitment under Embree’s watch this year was Mitchell Parsons, whose ego and weight gain scared off many programs , but MacIntyre immediately lost Jagne as well as another three-star commit in Marcus Loud (Missouri).  What am I missing here? 

We can’t really afford any more mediocre classes but that is exactly what we are getting.  I am a little worried that MacIntyre and staff have never really recruited the big boys, especially out west.

Go Buffs!