With the calendar flipping to October and official visit season in full swing, it's time for another check-in on the current state of football recruiting for the class of 2015 for your Washington Huskies.
HC Chris Petersen in on the hunt for OKG's
Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports
We're at week 6 of the football season as Washington takes their one bye for the season, and nearly half-way through the regular season. In terms of recruiting, we're still 4 months away from Signing Day (Wednesday, February 4th) but things are heating up - official visits have started, prospects are well underway in their senior seasons and coaches are doing their last rounds of evaluations to see if recruits are meeting projections and to see if any new prospects are emerging.
Washington is currently sitting on 15 known verbal commitments for the 2015 class. Expectations are that they will look to take close to - if not as much as - a full class of 25 kids. It's a solid-looking class so far that already has quite a bit of balance, and while it's not going to finish in the top 3 in the conference in terms of average star rating, they currently stand 6th with a chance to move up depending on how they close with some key prospects. Here are a few notes on their recruiting targets:
ICYMI, the Huskies got a commitment earlier this week from 2-star OLB/DE prospect Myles Rice out of Richmond, TX, a suburb of Houston. This is likely the work of DL/Special Teams coach Jeff Choate who has a long history of recruiting the area. While it's unlikely the Huskies will ever be major contenders for top talent in the Lone Star State, there's plenty of good prospects to be mined there and Choate can leverage his connections in the region the Huskies might be able to start establishing a small beachhead to supplement their main pipelines in Washington and California. Jamie Uyeyama at PacificTakes had this profile of Rice after his commitment.
Rice took his official visit to Washington last weekend; also here for their official visits were QB Jake Browning and WR Isaiah Renfro, both 4-star recruits that are committed to the Huskies. Browning is planning to graduate early and enroll for Winter Quarter in January and has signed financial aid agreement papers already. While Browning is not obligated to attend the UW and could enroll elsewhere, he's made it clear he wants to be at Washington, and by signing those papers the UW staff now has unlimited access to Browning and can discuss him publicly.
During the weekend of the Georgia State game the Huskies hosted another trio of prospects, and shortly after LB D.J. Beavers committed. Sounds like he and his family have a long association with a UW booster and the Huskies have been his dream school for quite a while. The visit sealed the deal with him and his family. DB Quinten Pounds was another visitor, and while he's said he'll make his decision on October 29th and has at least one more visit planned (Colorado), he appears to be very high on the Huskies.
Also committing last month were 4-star OL Henry Roberts of Bellevue H.S. and OLB/S prospect Ben Burr-Kirven. Roberts is widely regarded as the top OL prospect in the state this year amid a group of several FBS-level commitments (and Jamie Uyeyama at Pacific Takes likes what he sees of him), while BBK has been the subject of much speculation about his college position - he's listed as a LB by the scouting services but is a bit on the small side at 6', 200 lbs - he has good speed and might be viewed as a SS/Rover type by this staff, though we won't really know for sure until Signing Day and Petersen can speak publicly about him.
In other commitment news, local LB prospect Mustafa Branch out of Bellevue H.S. committed earlier this week to Stanford. Branch is a 3-star prospect that had other offers from Utah, Oregon State, WSU, Colorado & Northwestern among others - but not Washington. It appears that Petersen & his staff prioritized other LB's on their recruiting list. Also committing this week from Bellevue H.S. was 2016 DE/TE prospect Isaac Garcia to USC. Petersen definitely wanted Garcia, but he's a recent transplant from Fontana, CA and grew up idolizing the Trojans, so once he was offered a few weeks back it seemed likely he'd commit soon. I do expect Petersen to continue recruiting him and he's indicated he's still interested in taking official visits, so don't write this commitment in stone - there's a long way to go until February 2016.
A favorite Husky recruiting target for many on this site is ILB Jeremiah Ieremia, but it appears he's off the table once more as he's re-affirmed his commitment to BYU. He was very high on the Huskies, but in the end his faith and family sealed the deal for the Cougars. This was a close one though, so keep an eye out - if he decides to take an official visit to Washington, take that as a very good sign.
The only publicly known official visit on the horizon is for the UCLA game when 4-star WR Jaylinn Hawkins out of Buena Park, CA will be on hand. He's already visited Utah and is also slated to visit Oregon and ASU after his season ends and is also looking at Cal. Reports indicate that Washington and Oregon are his leaders. Expect the official visit list for the Bruins game to grow significantly in coming weeks as prospects get their SAT tests back and schedules get firmed-up.
That's all for now, but with the bye week here UW coaches have been on the road and you can bet that more news will pop up in the coming weeks of new offers, official visits and potentially more commitments - we'll keep you posted as it happens.
Here's the updated UW scholarship chart including 2015 verbal commitments:
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/40895142/20140920_jla_sn8_197.jpg.0.jpg)
Must Reads