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UVA football recruiting wish list
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Last week I offered up a wish list of four players I wanted for Tony Bennett's 2010 recruiting class; today, the same for the football team. There are, of course, quite a number of players already committed (nine at the time of this article) and room for more than four, but for symmetry's sake (and brevity's: a football class can be quite big and we'd be here all day when you should be out watching fireworks) I'll limit this to four also. And maybe a little of last week's magic can work again: not 48 hours after I'd put Will Regan down on the dream list, he committed to the Cavaliers.
Here are the four players I'd most like to see pledge to Al Groh, then:
WR Alex Kenney - This exciting wide receiver from State College, Pennsylvania lives in Penn State's backyard and might be tough to pry from the Nittany Lions' clutches. Kenney has given very favorable vibes to Virginia throughout his recruiting process, however, and would add some star power to Al Groh's recruiting class, with a four-star rating from Rivals.com and an appearance on the ESPN.com 150 Watch List. He has nearly 20 offers, mostly from ACC, Big Ten, and Big East schools, as well as a handful of SEC offers.
OT Robby Havenstein - Al Groh prefers his offensive lineman to be as large as humanly possible, and at 6'8" and nearly 350 pounds, Havenstein is as big as they come. Havenstein is from Maryland, so Groh is competing for his services with most of the same schools he competes against on the field every year: Maryland, Virginia Tech, UNC, etc.
DE Henry Anderson - Like Kenney, Henry Anderson is another player in demand who has also demonstrated a high degree of interest in UVa. Big-time schools such as Florida State and Michigan have offered Anderson, who also shows interest in several other ACC schools. Virginia was stung last summer by the academically-related transfer of rising star DE Jeffrey Fitzgerald; Anderson, besides being a promising talent, is a terrific scholar and would present no risk of troubles in the classroom.
DE Marcus Rush - Besides having one of the best possible names for a defensive end (Marcus Sack or Marcus Tackleforloss might be better, but nobody's complaining) Rush has scholarship offers from Michigan and Nebraska and he comes from a Cincinnati school with a track record of producing Division I talent. Rush plays the opposite side of the line from Anderson, and the two could make an excellent pair of bookends for the defensive line by 2012.
Unlike with basketball, there are more than four open scholarships for the 2010 class; just exactly how big the class will be is still up in the air. By NCAA rule, UVa can sign as many as 25 players; because of scholarship limitations, it won't be that large. UVa signed the maximum 25 in the recruiting class of 2009; this will, in stark contrast, be noticeably smaller, perhaps by as many as 10 players or more. But if it includes these four, quality will more than make up for a lack of quantity.
