Coaches going after players who have plenty of other major options. Definitely indicates a desire to raise the talent level on the team, but there have been... difficulties... in actually landing some of these guys in recent years, too.
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The recruiting calendar has changed a bit this year - there's a Dead Period through almost all of February, because the NCAA either doesn't understand what is good for student-athlete (or prospective student-athlete) welfare, or more likely, doesn't care, so the coaches have to squeeze more road time in now, because they can't host recruits through the entire month of February.
VT did basically everything right early in his recruitment. Safe to say that there's not a whole lot they have say over when these sorts of schools enter the mix.
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All VT can (and likely will) do is win at this point. The relationship stuff is already on lock, but if a kid wants to go to a program that's nearly guaranteed to make the CFP, well, VT isn't that.
You don't like to see underclassmen leave (unless they felt like they'd never be contributors), but given that these guys hit the portal after returning to campus and meeting with the coaching staff, you have to think the writing was on the wall depth chart-wise.
As we've discussed plenty of times, Hokies will have to make up a lot of ground to have a legit shot here (but they have the desire to do so, which is a more important first step than it seems - they could easily just say "forget it" and give up):
Always disappointing to see a kid leave, but in case you don't recall my evaluations during the recruiting process, I don't expect it to be mega-impactful on the field in the long run
Any chance we go after him? As I know he was a huge target for us back when he was coming out of Richmond. The Duke commitment never made a whole lot of sense to me and he never really did much there but maybe with us he could.
