This week’s special edition of the Hokie Hotline was the Annual Hokie Hotline Football Recruiting Special. The guests were recruiting coordinator Bryan Stinespring, coach Jim Cavanaugh and Roanoke Times writer Doug Doughty. The group discussed the recently signed football class of 2000, and offered some insight into the recruiting process.

Bryan Stinespring began the show by giving his assessment of this year’s recruiting class and reviewing most of the recruits individually. Stinespring admitted that all recruiters say that they did well at the end of the recruiting class, but he said that he felt that the staff was very excited about this year’s class, that the class was very versatile, and that the players that were signed met the team’s needs. Bill Roth asked about the uncharacteristically low number of in-state recruits in the class, and he responded that it isn’t Tech’s style, but represented the cyclical nature of recruiting in the state. He said that this year’s class was a little down from previous years.

When asked about the "slow" finish in recruiting following the perfect season and the Sugar Bowl appearance and whether he was surprised about it, Stinespring said that it was a fair assessment but that he wasn’t necessarily surprised. He admitted that Tech ended up 0-4 with mothers this season, and said that the staff would have to attend sensitivity training next year to help out with that. He said that the players often have a lot of reasons why they choose the school that they do, and that this year there were some crazy ones. He said the staff will try to learn from the process this year and improve in the future.

The order in which Roth and Stinespring discussed the players seemed somewhat random, but they seemed to be grouped together as they went along, so I’ll preserve the order that they followed. The first two players were Mikal Baaqee and Jason Lallis from DeMatha High School. Stinespring said that Baaqee isn’t a really big guy, but that he is similar to former Tech player Myron Newsome, and that he’ll take a player like Newsome any day. He said he goes sideline to sideline well, and then commented something like, "He arrives at the ball in a bad mood." He said that Lallis is a great athlete and one of the versatile players in the class, but that he’ll likely play defensive end for Tech.

The next two players were Charlie Wiles recruits James Miller and Channing Reed. Stinespring said that Miller will get bigger and stronger while he’s at Tech and that he’ll be an inside player for the Hokies with his long arms. He also said that he’d actually like to steal him for himself as an offensive line player. He characterized Reed as a diamond in the rough and suggested that he could be the "sleeper" in the class. He said he’s a mature guy with good size. Later in the show, one of the coaches said that there was no question that he could come in and help Tech win some games next year.

The next two players were Stinespring’s own offensive line recruits, Jonathan Dunn and Robert Ramsey. He said that he went out looking for the biggest, widest body that he could find, and he found Dunn, who he said is listed as 6’-6", 315 pounds. He said he has long arms and big hands, and initially said that he would play next year. He then backed off of that and said that the offensive line would be strong enough next year and that he might redshirt. Ramsey, he said, was a good center/guard combination for Tech and he played in a good league in Pennsylvania, where he is expected to be selected for the Big 33 game.

Prior to the first break, he discussed Eric Green, a player who initially committed to West Virginia, but signed with Virginia Tech after their coach (Doc Holliday) left to go to NC State. He said that Tech felt that they were in the lead for him all along, but that he wanted to play wide receiver in college. He looked at the depth chart at receiver at Tech and decided to go to West Virginia. Stinespring said that Tech was happy to have him on the team and commented that stability throughout the coaching staff at Tech helped to land him.

Following the break, he discussed Vinnie Burns, a punter out of New Orleans. He said that it has been easy over the past four years to take the kicking game for granted with outstanding players like Shayne Graham and Jimmy Kibble, but he also said that Frank Beamer will never take the kicking game for granted. Later in the show, Roth asked Coach Cavanaugh whether it was odd for Tech to get a recruit from so far away. He said that it wasn’t really that unusual because there was a connection. Burns had been recommended by one of the coaches that runs a kicking camp who really likes Virginia Tech, and the staff jumped at the chance to bring him to Blacksburg.

The next two players that Stinespring discussed were Lorenzo Ward recruits Mike Daniels and Chad Cooper, both from the Northern Virginia area. Daniels wanted to be a part of Virginia Tech, and Ward had a chance to see him while recruiting Brandon Royster, his high school teammate. Chad Cooper, whose father went to Virginia Tech, can play a lot of different positions. He projects now as a linebacker or a defensive end, and he has a knack for the ball.

Fellow Marylanders Vincent Fuller and Richard Johnson were the next two recruits. Roth commented that, at 6’-2" and 170 pounds, Fuller would be a tall defensive back for the Hokies, and Stinespring mentioned that he had come to camp at Tech and that the staff fell in love with him following that camp. He said that they were really excited about him as a player. It was mentioned that Johnson is a very highly rated player for the Hokies, and Stinespring said that there would be a war over his services between coaches Ball and Ward. Each of them wants him to play on his side of the ball.

The final two players that Coach Stinespring covered were Josh Spence and Michael Jackson. Spence, he said, can play both ways, and he labeled him as a "football player," in much the same way that Brandon Semones was a "football player" for the Hokies in years past. He said that Spence might be a little bigger, but they compared favorably otherwise because they both play hard and love Virginia Tech. Jackson is a 6’-3" tight end from Moeller High School in Cincinnati. He said that he has a lot of upside and that he’ll get bigger and stronger.

The final three recruits that were discussed initially, Travis Conway, Jared Mazzetta and James Davis, were covered by Jim Cavanaugh. Cavanaugh saw Conway as a junior and was impressed by his abilities as a long snapper. He was invited to Tech’s camp and was offered a scholarship. He said that Michigan State had actually offered him a scholarship first, and UVa got involved also, but they nipped that in the bud. He snaps the ball very quickly, and Cavanaugh hopes that he can eventually work into the mix as a back-up offensive lineman.

Jared Mazzetta originally went to the Rutgers camp, but he never got involved with going there. Maryland, Pittsburgh and Boston College were the other schools that he was interested in, but Tech was able to sign him because they promised to give him a shot at playing tight end. The rest of the schools basically said that he would be an offensive lineman. He has been selected to play in the NY-NJ All- Star game.

James Davis signed with Tech out of Fork Union, where he played defensive end. Virginia, Ohio State and Tennessee were the other schools that were interested in him, and Cavanaugh said that it got "dicey" for a while, but he ended up signing with Tech. Cavanaugh also said that it was, in fact, Tech that recommended that he go to Fork Union, and not Wilmer out of Virginia.

The remainder of the show was spent on a variety of question and answer topics, but I’ll try to consolidate it all into a few categories. The first of those is "other players." This consists of players that committed to other schools and other recruits that have already enrolled at Tech or will not enroll until next January.

The first of the "players that got away" that was discussed was the top rated player out of the state of Virginia, Brandon Royster. Royster was the only tailback that Tech recruited this year, and Bryan Stinespring said that he was shocked that he didn’t come to Tech, and that Coach Ward was equally shocked. He said that he had always been in Blacksburg for the big games and that he had had a great recruiting visit. Doug Doughty also said that he was surprised that he went to Stanford. He had talked to him after his visit to Stanford, and Royster said that he was 95% certain about where he would go to school. Doughty said he took that, and based on what he had been seeing on the Internet at the time, assumed that it meant he was going to Tech. One of the guests also said that he could have visited almost any school in the country, but that he wasn’t sure that he was a franchise running back. Stinespring later said he pulled out his notes from the initial strategy sessions, and that they said to "recruit" a great running back. He pointed out that they didn’t necessarily want to "sign" any running back, but that they wanted to have a chance at landing a quality running back.

Maurice Shanks is another player that Tech had recruited that signed elsewhere -- in this case, Maryland. Coach Cavanaugh said that he had wanted to play wide receiver, and that his mother got involved, when he felt that she wouldn’t be a factor in the recruiting. He also said that he had chosen Maryland for some reasons that he couldn’t discuss on the air. He said he wished him luck, but did admit that the staff had "cooled" on him a little bit when he "didn’t handle himself well in some situations."

One player that did sign with Virginia Tech is Kevin McCadam, who signed his National Letter of Intent on Tuesday. He is a 1997 high school graduate, who originally signed with Colorado State and redshirted a year. He transferred to a junior college and fractured his collar bone without playing at all that season. He played free safety this past season and recorded 100-102 tackles. He is said to have decent speed, but no one seems sure how many years of eligibility he will have, since he plans to appeal to the NCAA after not playing at all during his first season in junior college. Doug Doughty said that he would have an article about McCadam in the Roanoke Times on Wednesday.

Three of the recruits that were not discussed were Sam Fatherly, Jason Davis and Malcolm Wooldridge. Fatherly and Davis enrolled in January and Wooldridge will not enroll until next January. A caller asked about the status of Davis, and it was mentioned that there is a possibility that he could help with the kicking game next season, but that he really wants to sit out another year, which he has contemplated since before he started high school.

Stinespring commented that not all of the recruits had qualified yet, but that there was only one that needed to raise his test scores. He said that this was a strong character group and it was mentioned that Ballein, the former recruiting coordinator, had labeled this class as the best ever in terms of academics.

In addition to the comments that Bryan Stinespring made to open the show, the overall evaluation of the class was discussed a few times. Jim Cavanaugh said that it was hard to rank each class, since they all fill different roles, but that this class fills the needs that the team had. In general, the team needed more speed, and that’s one of the things that it gets with this class. Doug Doughty said, when compared to Virginia, that Virginia Tech had the better year in recruiting, but that the two classes ended up a lot closer than most people originally thought.

Later, one of the guests mentioned the G&W Recruiting Report, which ranked recruiting before the signing date. It had Tech ranked number 16, as compared to Miami at 13, Virginia at 23 and Syracuse at 24. He also said that it is very difficult to rank classes because it’s not an exact science. He joked that some schools could make up a player and say that he had visited some of the high-profile schools and that that player would end up being an All-American or a highly rated player somewhere.

On the subject of recruiting players, Doughty said that he would rate this year’s junior class a few more times leading up to next season. It was mentioned that he may need to go to a Top 30 or a Top 35, since next year’s class around the State will be so strong. As an example, Doughty said that this year’s number 26 player went to Norfolk State, but that next year he expects many players outside the Top 25 to receive Division I-A scholarships.

One member of the audience asked if Tech would soon start to recruit outside of its traditional area. Jim Cavanaugh fielded that question by saying that they wouldn’t. He said that they had been very successful in the Virginia-West Virginia-Maryland-Florida area, and that they would stick to that unless they had a reason to think that they could lure a player away from his region to come to Tech. He also said later that it’s good to get local players because they know the importance of playing "that school over the mountain."

When Roth asked about Chad Cooper and where he would end up playing, it was mentioned that he would probably start out at inside linebacker, but that Coach Beamer allows players to move to where they feel most comfortable. Players coming into the system often feel nervous, and that’s one way that he has been able to ease that feeling from the beginning.

A caller, who called himself "Malachai", asked if the staff went through any rituals following the recruiting process since they were under such stress. The coaches thought they knew who the caller really was and asked if it was really "Big John", but he had hung up. They said that they thought that it was a former player trying to play a joke on his former coaches.

A question from the audience dealt with recruiting a tailback next year. The response was that tailbacks would be recruited, but that there would be a lot of talented running backs in the program next season, including Suggs, Burnell, Kendrick, who will be back in the fall, and Easlick, who is currently on the Tech wrestling team.

Bill Roth asked Stinespring what the staff would be doing now that recruiting season was over. He commented that they were already gearing up for next year’s recruiting class, and that they had already received their first commitment. He reiterated that they weren’t going to rest, and that some of the coaches were headed to places like Nebraska and Indianapolis for various reasons.

• The men’s basketball team will play Thursday on the road against St. Bonaventure and Saturday at Rhode Island, where Jeff Jones is an assistant coach. Game time for Thursday is 7:00, with radio coverage beginning at 6:30.
• The Hokie Hotline will return next Monday, and the guests will be head basketball coaches Rickey Stokes and Bonnie Henrickson. I won’t be able to cover the Hotline Notes for that show, however. I’ll be in Blacksburg next Tuesday at a career fair, doing a little of my own recruiting for my boss.