North Carolina State University Athletics
PEELER: O'Brien Pleased With 3rd Signing Class
2/4/2009 12:00:00 AM | Football
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH, N.C. NC State Tom O’Brien always looks at National Signing Day as the beginning rather than the end. So there’s rarely any preening about rankings or “stars” or internet buzz generated by his incoming players.
He prefers for those accolades to come later in their careers.
“As I said a couple of years ago, we don’t care what they came in as, but they better leave as five-star players,” O’Brien said Wednesday afternoon in introducing his third recruiting class with the Wolfpack.
He took it even a step further, noting that his recruiting classes at Boston College were rarely ever ranked in the top 25, but his team was among the top 15 in wins and composite AP rankings in his final eight years at Chestnut Hill.
“If we like a guy, we like a guy, I don’t care if [everyone else likes] him or not,” O’Brien said.
There is certainly plenty to like among the 24 new signees and the four players who have already enrolled in at NC State. The class fulfills O’Brien’s criteria for being champions in the classroom, championship in the community and champions on the field.
There are two incoming engineering majors, a quarterback who led his high school to the state championship game and the son of Adolph Rupp’s first African-American basketball player at Kentucky. It includes the brother of an NFL tight end, the son of a Michigan District Court Justice, a displaced Hurricane Katrina survivor and the grandson of a UNC professor, who told his son’s son to look at the Wolfpack over the Tar Heels.
There was a recruit suggested by former player Jimmie Sutton III, who served as a volunteer coach at his high school alma mater in Florida and thought the Wolfpack coaches would be interested in one of the players.
“Once again, it’s a great day for Wolfpack football,” O’Brien said. “We welcome what we think is an excellent class, one that this coaching staff is really looking forward to coaching.”
For O’Brien, that’s the key, to find players he and his staff like and will enjoy coaching and transforming over the next four or five years into quality football players.
“We are at our best when we are bringing in players we can develop,” O’Brien said. “There are certainly very good players here. There are people here who have abilities we can help develop as coaches.”
The class includes 12 linemen on offense and defense, position where the Wolfpack lacked depth last year.
“We haven’t had enough linemen,” O’Brien said. “We had a lot of holes we had to fill. This will solve the problem in the long run.”
The staff found players from 11 different states, from Massachusetts to Florida, with a total of seven players from Georgia, a state where the Wolfpack staff would like to set up a strong foundation. Plus, there’s a graduate of New Mexico Military Junior College grad who was born and raised in Pago Pago, Samoa, just like former Wolfpack defensive line star Ricky Logo.
“We signed an entire football team, someone at every position,” O’Brien said. “And that’s what we must continue to do to develop our depth.”
The coach announced some other personnel developments with his team.
First-team All-ACC quarterback Russell Wilson, who suffered a knee injury near the end of the first half of the Papajohns.com Bowl in Birmingham, Ala., continues to recover. He will have an MRI in three weeks to see how the injury is healing.
Wide receiver Donald Bowens, who missed all of last season with a vertebrae fracture, suffered a knee injury in the off-season that required surgery on Wednesday. Wide receiver Darrell Davis also had arthroscopic shoulder surgery on Tuesday.
O’Brien hopes Davis will return in time for spring practice, which begins in March and ends with the annual Red & White Spring Game at Carter-Finley Stadium on April 18. The coach said he would not know about Bowens’ return until later.
Three players are no longer on the team. Wide receiver Geron James has decided to transfer, and quarterback Harrison Beck and defensive lineman Jamaine Clemmons will graduate this spring and not return to the team next fall.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
