Dec 27, 2013; San Francisco, CA, USA; Washington Huskies mascot Harry (left) poses with fan Kymber Payne at the 2013 Fight Hunger Bowl at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
The Washington Huskies got some exciting news today while Cougar nation was left shaking their collective heads again. In a bit of an unexpected move by the back-story and recent quoted comments in various articles, the Dawgs snagged another terrific state of Washington product in 4-star Kaleb McGary of Fife.
McGary is slated to be a defensive lineman for the Dawgs, the same position quite possibly that he would have lined up at for Washington State, who was among the final three for the big 4-star. The other team in the running was Wisconsin, but even though he raved about the Badgers, they apparently were just too far away for McGary to pull the trigger.
Washington State’s problem? It’s difficult to say, but the most easy things to point to are that the WSU visit happened too early and McGary’s always been a Washington fan, along with his die-hard UW-centric family. Ever since that OV to Washington State, McGary was ever-steady in his compliments of the coaching staff and the town and atmosphere surrounding campus.
He also said that the city of Seattle wasn’t really his thing and his country nature had a lot of Cougars hoping the connection would ultimately lead him to Pullman, but it wasn’t to be. Even though there have been some recent splits between football families (Jake/Casey Locker, Marcus/Desmond Trufant), allegiances in the state of Washington die hard, not to mention Chris Petersen (much as we are beginning to loathe him) is one of the best people the college football coaching world has to offer. Obviously that’s going to be tough to pass up and this was just another example of a kid not being able to separate himself emotionally from a place he’s always loved.
And again, the WSU visit came first, which means the nostalgia from what he described at the time as a “surprisingly pleasant” visit, has worn off, at least a fair amount. Washington and Wisconsin are both huge, beautiful football stadiums with a nice campus and present a difficult challenge to surpass in “wow factor” status still for the WSU coaching staff. Husky Stadium in-particular is a beautiful place and sometimes it’s tough to see what something will look like if it’s not right in front of you. The Cougars were still a ways away from a finished product at Martin when McGary came and visited. But after the football operations building is complete and the minor logistics like score/video board placement and such are complete, that should become a non-existent issue. It will sell itself to future kids like McGary.
So it is that Washington State is down to a single hope, DE/DL Marcus Griffin, to reel in a 4-star product in the class of 2014. Griffin has announced that his decision will take place on Wed. (signing day) at 1 pm. OLB Xavier Ulutu, and WR Deion Singleton seem to be the only other prospects the Cougars are really going after at this point for the class, but there could always be a surprise in the works, like JC WR’s Sam Boyd or Kenny Torrence out of Riverside CC, or TE Brayden Lenius out of Chaminade Prep in West Hills, CA. Also, we haven’t heard a whole lot about 3-star DE’s Tim Wilkerson (Katy, TX) and Tramal Ivy (Muskogee, OK) but they seem to be highly interested in WSU at this point and according to Scout have offers on the table. Whether they’re being actively recruited is anyone’s guess.
The Washington State class still sits at 24 commits so there is at least one spot to fill and it looks like Signing Day will hold some intrigue after all.