Doug Doughty

Doug Doughty's College Notebook Plus is exclusive to roanoke.com and is posted by 5 p.m. Fridays.

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In reading SuperPrep’s All-America issue, for which I rate the top senior football prospects in Virginia, what surprised me was the relatively low rankings for some of the the out-of-state prospects who have committed to Virginia and Virginia Tech.

The Cavaliers and Hokies each have received two commitments from South Carolina prospects and none of the four is rated any higher than Virginia recruit Dontrelle Inman, a wide receiver who was 20th on the South Carolina list attributed to Phil Kornblut.

The other UVa recruit from South Carolina, offensive lineman Landon Bradley, is 35th out of 35 players on Kornblut’s list. The two Tech-bound South Carolinians, tight end Andrew Lanier and all-purpose threat Kendrick Pressley, were 25th and 28th.

Tech did get the 14th-rated prospect in North Carolina, linebacker Barquell Rivers, but another Tech recruit, running back Josh Oglesby, was 32nd on analyst Sammy Batten’s list. Another Tech recruit from the Tar Heel state, Kwamaine Battle, went unranked.

Tech-bound tight end Rhett Ellison is 115th on SuperPrep’s list of the top 148 players in California, Hawaii and Nevada.

How should one interpret that?

In the process of processing that information, my cross-checking revealed that the name, Kendrick Pressley, never has appeared in The Roanoke Times. Or, at least, it hadn’t appeared with that spelling or a reasonable facsimile.

So, those are the kind of guys who do these evaluations, older guys like me who forget things. However, I do think that the early commitments made by many of the Tech and UVa recruits tend to hurt them in the rankings.

That isn’t the case with in-state recruits, particularly prospects like Tyrod Taylor (Tech) and Peter Lalich (UVa) who had a dozen or more offers in May of their junior year, but when you’ve got a kid from South Carolina who commits to Virginia Tech in the middle of the summer, he’s out of sight and out of mind.

ONE TECH RECRUIT who did fare better than some might have expected was Hunter Ovens, a Sarasota, Fla., linebacker who was rated the No. 18 player in his position by SuperPrep, which qualified him as a SuperPrep All-American.

This is the same Hunter Ovens who briefly reconsidered his commitment this fall when he sensed that Tech wanted him to enroll in January 2008. Tech may not have the numbers crunch it once anticipated, in which case the Hokies wouldn’t need Ovens to enroll at midyear.

Other out-of-state Tech recruits and how they were rated: tight end Brandon Barden, No. 37 in Georgia; tight end Chris Drager, No. 16 in Pennsylvania; running back Darren Evans, No. 41 in the Midwest (third in Indiana); and defensive linemen Justin Young and Courtney Prince, Nos. 12 and 15 in the Mid-Atlantic.

It’s funny how SuperPrep does these lists. There is a separate list for some of the smaller states, like Kentucky and Mississippi, but not for Indiana or Maryland. If you separate the Maryland players from the rest of the Mid-Atlantic (D.C., Delaware and West Virginia), Young and Prince are fourth and eighth.

UVa recruits Nick Jenkins and Lamar Milstead are seventh and ninth in the Mid-Atlantic 36 but they are the third- and fourth-rated prospects, respectively, in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Other out-of-state Virginia recruits and how they were rated were wide receiver Chase Minniefield, No. 1 in Kentucky, and tight end Andrew Devlin, No. 19 in Pennsylvania.

Two other Pennsylvanians headed to Virginia, tight end Mark Ambrose and Zane Parr, were mentioned in Devlin’s capsule but were not ranked among the state’s top 35 prospects. Another UVa-bound Pennsylvanian, defensive back Dominique Joseph, wasn’t mentioned at all.

It’s hard to believe that UVa would sign four players from Pennsylvania and three wouldn’t be in the top 35. But, there are a bunch of us knuckleheads out there.

AT LEAST ONE VIRGINIA fan has left a voice message and inquired why The Roanoke Times hasn’t reported the commitment that first-team All-Washington Metro wide receiver Vincent Hill has made to the Cavaliers.

I held off on Hill because what I’m hearing conflicts with Hill’s assertion that he will sign with Virginia in February but attend prep school in the fall. UVa likes Hill and will be happy to take his commitment but whether he will sign Feb. 7 is another matter.

The other hot rumor was that West Springfield’s Lalich would transfer to Western Albemarle for the second semester in order to be closer to the UVa program, but his West Springfield coach, Bill Renner, thinks there would be too much red tape involved to make that a reality.

VIRGINIA TECH WILL NOT GET a visit from Ahoskie, N.C., defensive lineman Tydreke Powell, who was to have been in Blacksburg this weekend but canceled his visit after making a commitment to new North Carolina coach Butch Davis.

On the other hand, Tech will get a visit from Desmond Roberts, a 6-foot-5, 265-pound offensive lineman from Northampton-West High School in Gaston, N.C. Roberts, rated the No. 34 prospect in North Carolina by SuperPrep, committed to North Carolina State in August but decided to look at other schools following the dismissal of coach Chuck Amato.

SuperPrep reported that Roberts is looking at Penn State, Tech and North Carolina, which suggests that he may be underrated at No. 34.