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Friday, August 17, 2007

Hall not alone among No. 1 flameouts

Tech recruit compared to Chancellor

By Doug Doughty

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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The temptation was to stay home from work this morning when “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” came on the American Movie Classics at 9:50 a.m.

However, there was an Al Groh teleconference scheduled for 11:30 a.m. and it’s a good thing I didn’t blow that off.

Usually, a column idea materializes over the course of the day, but this one was ready-made.

At the end of the call, Groh confirmed that outside linebacker Olu Hall would not be with Virginia’s football team during the 2007 season or probably ever again.

Hall was eligible by Virginia standards but not by NCAA standards. At UVa, it’s usually the other way around.

Hall’s ineligibility, though not surprising, did raise at least one question at the SEC Roundtable, attended by an overflow crowd at Mike Flanary’s Cornerstone Grill on the Roanoke City Market.

Hall was rated the No. 1 prospect in Virginia by The Roanoke Times following the 2003 season. He spent the 2004 season at Hargrave, played at Virginia as a true freshman when he probably shouldn’t have in 2005, then sat out the 2006 season to concentrate on academics.

Where he goes next is anybody’s guess. Several of his ex-UVa teammates have surfaced at Division I-AA Liberty, but if Hall is ineligible at one NCAA program, you’d have to think that the same standards would apply at other NCAA classifications (but maybe they don’t).

Maybe Hall will resurface and, based on Groh’s comments about “rooting” for him, you’d have to believe he’s a good kid who deserves something good to happen to him. But the question is fairly obvious: Has there been a bigger bust among No. 1 recruits in recent years?

I tried to come up with a kinder word than “bust,” but that would only be a euphemism.

Up until five or six years ago, I had a folder containing all the old Roanoke Times Top 25 dating back to the mid-1970s; then, I took it to Annapolis when I accompanied my older son to a swim meet and I haven’t been able to find it since.

Since then, I’ve been able to retrieve Top 25s going back to 1997-98 and could back further than that if I needed to.

Here are the No. 1 players on The Roanoke Times’ final list for the past 10 years: 2006 – Tyrod Taylor (Virginia Tech); 2005 – Percy Harvin (Florida); 2004 – Macho Harris (Tech); 2003 – Olu Hall (UVa); 2002 – Xavier Adibi (Tech); 2001 – Ahmad Brooks (UVa); 2000 – Bryan Randall (Tech); 1999 – Brandon Royster (Stanford); 1998 – Daniel Davis (UNC); 1997 – Ronald Curry (UNC).

Of course, Taylor, a true freshman, hasn’t taken the field for Tech yet. Of his six predecessors, only Hall has not been an impact player.

But, if you go back to the players who made No. 1 in 1998 and 1999, Davis and Royster, you’ll find two other players who didn’t make much of a ripple at the college level.

Royster graduated from Stanford with a degree in mechanical engineering, but he was redshirted his first year, moved to wide receiver as a redshirt freshman but saw most of his playing time on special teams. According to the Stanford media guide, he received a letter in 2002 but accounted for only one tackle. There was no mention of any offensive statistics.

Davis actually was Carolina’s leading rusher as a true freshman, when he gained 303 yards, but he was dismissed from the team after the season. He enrolled at Garden City (Kan.) Community College, after which he signed with his second Division I-A team, Kansas State. After rushing for a total of 225 yards in 2002, he was arrested for fighting on the eve of the 2003.

Hall played in eight games as a true freshman at Virginia in 2005, assisting on one tackle in 94 plays. He had academic problems, Royster had injury problems and Davis had disciplinary reasons. Nobody really questioned whether the latter two should have been rated No. 1, but even Robinson coach Mark Bendorf urged restraint when talking about Hall.

"I think a lot of the recruiting interest in Olu is based on an upside," Bendorf said for a Christmas 2003 story. “He moves well. He's got good feet. He's a tall, lanky guy who has the potential to put on a lot of size. Do I think that he's going to be ready to play right off? I don't.”

Sometimes, it’s easy to look at the competition and see why a player was ranked No. 1. In 1999, the No. 2 prospect behind Royster was Raymond Mann, who was a journeyman defensive end at Virginia. They were followed by running back Chris Perry (Michigan), wide receiver Maurice Shanks (Maryland) and defensive back Chad Cooper (Tech).

Perry, who was from Winston-Salem, N.C., but played on the undergraduate team at Fork Union, clearly was the best of that bunch. Cooper was diagnosed with Gullain-Barre Syndrome, a rare disease that affects the body's nervous system, and never lived up to his buildup.

Hall was joined on the 2003 Top 5 by No. 2 Eddie Royal, No. 3 Chris Long and No. 4 Sean Glennon. Hall had a more impressive list of suitors, but, when it comes to college careers, it wasn’t even close. When you add No. 7 Branden Ore to Glennon and Royal, that’s three of Virginia Tech’s primary offensive threats. Long was joined in the top 10 by fellow UVa signees No. 8 Clint Sintim and No. 10 Cedric Peerman.

In that company, Hall looks like a bad choice, but academic issues are often tricky. UVa signed two players rated No. 1 by The Roanoke Times in the early 1990s, Aaron Sparrow and Lamonte Still, and neither one ended up playing for the Cavaliers, although Still did enroll in school.

That doesn’t mean they were bad players. Both ended up having good careers in the CIAA, Sparrow at Norfolk State and Still at Hampton.

MUCH HAS BEEN MADE of Virginia Tech’s connections in the state coaching ranks and there would not be a better example than Steve Canter, a walk-on fullback for the 2002 and 2003 Tech teams.

Canter, 26, is in his second season at the head coach at Landstown High School, whose Xavier Boyce made an oral commitment to the Hokies earlier this week.

Boyce, a 6-foot-5, 207-pound wide receiver and safety, is one of 12 Virginians among the 17 prospects who have committed to Tech for 2008.

“I’ve got strong ties to the program,” Canter said. “I’ve been pushing him in that direction. Obviously, they’ll [the players] make all their own decisions. All I can do is tell him all the positives of the program.”

Boyce, a cousin of Tech tailback Branden Ore, returned from a one-day camp at Tech with a positive impression and it’s a wonder he didn’t commit earlier than he did.

Canter compared Boyce to Kam Chancellor, who played quarterback at Maury High School in Norfolk before signing with the Hokies in 2006. Chancellor (6-4, 219) moved to defensive back and played in 13 games for Tech last year as a true freshman. He was listed No. 1 at rover for the Hokies coming into this season.

Boyce started at quarterback for Landstown last year but has moved to wide receiver this year and had a 45-yard touchdown reception in a recent scrimmage. He did not play defense last year but showed promise in the secondary as a sophomore.

“He’s [Boyce] very versatile,” Canter said. “He can come in and play numerous positions. Losing five senior receivers this year, coach [Curt] Newsome said it wasn’t out of the question that he would come in in the fall as a wide receiver.

“To be honest, he’s very natural at that position. He can run, he can stretch the field vertically. He can go up and get the ball. He’s a basketball player, so he’s got a great vertical leap.”

Boyce passed for approximately 1,300 yards and 16 touchdowns last year, and rushed for 50 yards.

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