Friday, December 18, 2009
Commitment to Hargrave was easy for Tech-bound Gibson
End to Young saga not imminent for UVa
Doug Doughty
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The prospect of attending military school was not as daunting for Laurence Gibson as it might have been for some college prospects.
“I was either going to come here,” said Gibson, who announced his commitment to Virginia Tech earlier in the week, “or I was going to join the Army.
“I wasn’t going to junior college.”
Gibson (6 foot 5, 300 pounds) spent his last two years of high school in a part of the country, Arizona, where junior college is a common route to the Division I-A level. But, Gibson comes from a military background.
His father is a police officer in Las Vegas and is mother is in the Army and is currently stationed in Korea. Laurence was born in Fort Bragg, N.C., and says he lived for a time in Virginia at a location he can’t remember.
He also spent time at Fort Irwin, an Army installation located in Barstow, Calif., an approximately two-hour drive from Las Vegas.
His most recent home was in Sierra Vista, Ariz., site of another army base, Fort Huachuca.
Gibson said he had no offers coming out of high school, when he was a 240-pound defensive end, “but my mom believed in me and decided to pay the money for me to come to Hargrave,” he said.
GIBSON, RECRUITED for Tech by Hokies’ offensive coordinator Bryan Stinespring, is one of three Hargrave players who have committed to Tech.
The others are a pair of 2009 signees, offensive lineman D’Antre Rhodes from Varina and wide receiver-defensive back Theron Norman from Richmond’s Hermitage High School.
Gibson and Norman have met NCAA eligibility guidelines that will allow them to enroll at Tech in January, but Rhodes has issues that will require him to return to Hargrave for the next quarter.
Gibson, Rhodes and Norman are part of a 2010 Tech recruiting class that currently numbers 21 and the Hokies basically are waiting on one other player, 6-6, 222-pound defensive end Kareem Martin from Roanoke Rapids, N.C.
Martin already has visited Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech and Duke, with a January trip scheduled to North Carolina. Brian Mohr, who administers the Virginia Tech site on rivals.com, says that Martin is the only uncommitted player that the Hokies have better than a 1-percent chance of signing. He puts the odds of Tech getting Martin at 50-50.
VIRGINIA FANS WILL have to wait until Monday for an update on Louis Young, a four-star defensive back from Good Counsel in Olney, Md., who has said he will announce his choice at the Crab Bowl, an annual all-star game between teams from the Washington, D.C., and Baltimore areas.
The game originally was scheduled for Saturday but was pushed back to Monday because of winter storms in the forecast. Organizers of postseason games enjoy the publicity that comes from commitments at their games, but Young’s Monday announcement won’t necessarily reflect a done deal.
Young already has said that he will visit Stanford and Virginia on back-to-back weekends in January. He already has committed to Stanford once but the likely appointment of London piqued his interest in Virginia. Indeed, even before the London hire, Young had come out and said that UVa was likely to hire a coach who previously had recruited his school.
ANOTHER INTERESTING dynamic in Virginia’s recruiting is that London, as a Division I-AA head coach until recently, would have been more aware of the state’s top uncommitted players because those are the players over whom the I-AAs fight at this point in the recruiting process.
I’ve seen no indication that Richmond, London’s former employer, was involved with 6-5, 270-pound offensive lineman Stephen Lawe from Norfolk’s Maury High School. However, London was quick to make an offer to Lawe, who is on a short list of uncommitted Virginians receiving I-A interest for the Class of 2010.
Lawe, a 2.8 student, also has an offer from Memphis.
THE STATE’S TOP uncommitted prospect is Ed Reynolds II, a 6-3, 190-pound defensive back from Jacksonville, Fla., who has played at Woodberry Forest in Orange for at least the past three seasons.
Reynolds is the son of former UVa and NFL defensive end Ed Reynolds Sr., and Ed Sr., in an interview for Thursday’s UVa Insider, said that he “lives and dies” with the Cavaliers. However, UVa withdrew a scholarship offer to Ed II when they took two commitments from safeties in the spring.
Woodberry coach Clint Alexander said that Al Groh wasn’t the only coach who dissed the younger Reynolds. When Ed II and teammate Aramide Olaniyan went to Notre Dame for a camp last summer, they reportedly were among the standouts in a group of 100, but then-Irish assistant Jon Tenuta wouldn’t approve them, according to Alexander.
The final decision came down to Irish head coach Charlie Weis, who, as Alexander pointed out, “was another NFL guy,” a reputation he shared with Groh.
