Headline, August 14: D-line is still hardest spot to recruit

Headline, August 21: WVU lands four-star DL

Whoops!

You’ll recall Erik Slaughter, WVU’s defensive line coach, laid out his recruiting plan a week ago. Within it, he made some new points and refreshed some old theories here. He said he’d recruit kids who could grow into different players, but retain natural ability they had before they transformed their bodies. Ideally, they’d evolve in such a way that they could be able to play various positions.

Well, within that conversation, two things struck me that I didn’t intend to convey in the story, but can now:

1) He was very determined to change the way people think about the way WVU recruits defensive linemen — and really, talk to the guy once or twice, or just watch him work, and you see determination.

2) He was confident he could get very good to great prospects on campus.

Well, not one week after that story and that headline — and I’m sorry, it’s still hardest to recruit — Slaughter and the Mountaineers hooked their first four-star defensive lineman since Bruce Irvin in 2009 and Tevita Finau in 2008.

Yet those shouldn’t really count. They were junior college guys, and Finau is a whole different story on his own. The last four-star high school defensive lineman was … well, I can’t tell you that. The record I keep from being on the beat go back to the 2002 class. I don’t see one. So is it Osa Nosa?

Special thanks to De’Asian Richardson for exercising great timing with his commitment Monday.

“It was good to get it over with so now I can just play football,” said Richardson, a Rivals four-star recruit. “It was very stressful trying to think about the big decision, but I felt like I made a great decision.”

Richardson said that he still planned to take his five official visits — Mississippi State, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and the Mountaineers — although the four other programs will have some ground to make up. Richardson said that he feels comfortable with West Virginia. He originally pledged to Florida State following a visit last spring, but quickly reopened the process. He also plays tight end for the Raiders, but his future at the next level is on defense.