WSU Football Recruiting: Coug-Commit Thomas Toki Excited About Austin Joyner Going Crimson

More good news came out of the Austin Joyner commitment for Washington State, if you’re a recruiting enthusiast. The first Coug-commit, Thomas Toki, who has moved from the state of Washington to California for his senior season, has been thought to be waffling a bit on his pledge. This isn’t shocking news in today’s recruiting world but it certainly is a concern to Coug fans who are really excited about the potential of the awesome defensive tackle being in Pullman.

Perhaps we read too much into these things (in fact we know that these sorts of things can mean absolutely zip after last year’s episodes with Marcus Griffin and Chandler Leniu who ended up elsewhere in the Pac-12), but it’s still important that your commits get excited about potential classmates. That’s why this tweet from Toki is good news.

I can’t help it, I love recruiting and this type of stuff matters to me. When Toki resided in WA less than a year ago he was the No. 1 player in the state, but when he moved Joyner took that honor. Now, both are committed to Wazzu and it’s big for the Cougs’ chances of holding onto the former that the ladder cemented his verbal.

Just because one player backed out of his pledge a year ago doesn’t mean a guy will do it this year so giving up hope on a player because he is viewed as a “soft verbal” is nonsense. We can only trust that Mike Leach and his staff are working their butts off to both secure more commitments and hold onto their current ones at any given point in time.

Most importantly though, committed classes feed themselves and as the Cougars get more and more of these four-stars to commit, more will want in on the party. Regardless of whether Toki ultimately flakes or sticks, I think it’s obvious the Cougs are turning the proverbial recruiting corner. When you land verbals from two different No. 1 players within your state in the same class you’re doing something tremendous.