Four-star receiver Kanya Bell committed to San Jose State less than 24 hours before signing day. He had offers from USC and UCLA.
This is a real thing that happened in 2015.
Jeremy Kelly, a three-star safety, announced that he was signing with SJSU over Colorado and San Diego State. He had offers from Utah, Washington, California and Arizona State, too.
San Jose State? As in the school that, as recently as 2010 went 2-10 — with Dick Tomey as head coach — and has just three bowl bids in the past 25 years? Surely, you can’t be serious.
Tae’on Mason, a four-star wide receiver, made the decision to sign with San Jose State. Mason was a onetime USC commit who also gave his verbal pledge to Washington State before flipping to the Spartans.
Hold on, what?
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During the last recruiting cycle of 2015, San Jose State emerged as a thorn in the side of Pac-12 schools, flipping recruits from the conference of champions to a school that’s historically been, at best, seventh or eighth in the pecking order of the Mountain West conference.
By the time signing day came and went last year, across the three major online recruiting services the Spartans had a recruiting class that was rated similar to or better than Oregon State and Colorado in the Pac-12, and Boise State and San Diego State in the Mountain West.
How can that be?
Well, there was a man working in the shadows of the Los Angeles recruiting scene the last few years. He built a reputation for finding guys in Los Angeles nobody had heard of before and offering them scholarships, only to see Pac-12 schools catch wind, jump on the bandwagon and do their best to steal them away. That’s the world of recruiting — Power 5 programs usually get priority. Usually.
Still, the man really had been a thorn in the Pac-12’s side the past few years, convincing players like Bell, Kelly and Mason — the highest-rated recruit in SJSU history — to go play at a school that has never brought in that level of talent before. And he’d do it in spite of commitments, offers and interest from schools in the “conference of champions.”
He’s been viewed an up-and-comer in the coaching profession — Sports Illustrated pegged him one of the nation’s 10 best recruiters in 2015 — and recently he officially joined the Pac-12 fray.
He’s Donté Williams, a new member of Rich Rodriguez’s defensive coaching staff at Arizona.
The Wildcats, it seems, have their ace in the hole.
“I knew it was coming,” said Armond Hawkins, a prominent high school coach in Los Angeles. “It was just a matter of when. San Jose State is not big enough for him.”
•••
When Arizona’s offseason began, Rich Rodriguez made a quick, decisive statement. In firing cornerbacks coach David Lockwood, long a Rodriguez cohort, and replacing him internally by promoting 33-year old Jahmile Addae, he made it clear — it’s time to get younger.
He reaffirmed that when he dismissed defensive coordinator Jeff Casteel and defensive line coach Bill Kirelawich, with 78 years of coaching experience between them.
Casteel and Kirelawich, while involved with recruiting, weren’t exactly Arizona’s most active coaches on the trail. Rodriguez’s goal was clear — bring in youthful coaches with a hard-edged determination for recruiting.
And another thing — RichRod wants to hit Los Angeles. Hard.
Williams, 33, checks all the boxes.
“I didn’t send guys to Arizona because I didn’t feel like they were in our community enough,” said Hawkins, who runs the prominent Ground Zero 7-on-7 football program, which produces dozens of Division I players each year. “I didn’t feel like they took us as a priority, and I know that’s going to change now. That’s automatic.”
It’s a pretty well-known fact that USC gets first dibs on the top-level recruits, and UCLA is right behind the Trojans. Everyone else, often, is left to fight for the scraps.
Still, there are some talented scraps left over.
That next level push, in theory, should come from Arizona State and Arizona, since Stanford and Cal’s high academic standards often hinder those schools’ efforts to land many of the area’s elite recruits. The Arizona schools are geographically close enough that it’s not too long of a trek. In that regard, purely based on recruit rankings, the Sun Devils have had the edge in recent years, reeling in six four-star recruits from the Los Angeles area in 2015 alone, according to Scout.com. Arizona had, well, zero from the same region.
“One thing they want to do is step over Arizona State into L.A.,” said Gardena Serra coach Scott Altenberg, who is sending four-star quarterback Khalil Tate to Arizona in the 2016 class. “They want to get their piece of L.A. With L.A., USC and UCLA have the advantage, but there’s so much out here.”
Dating to the Mike Stoops era, the Wildcats have recruited California, but not always L.A. — the UA often delves into the Bay Area and San Diego talent pools — but rarely for the top guys.
Excluding the incoming 2016 class, according to Scout.com over the last 10 years Arizona has brought in an average of about eight recruits from the state of California per year, five of them coming from the Los Angeles area.
With Rodriguez from 2012-2015, Arizona brought in 21 recruits from the Los Angeles area, the standouts being Bishop Salesian linebackers Jamardre Cobb and Marquis Ware, both four-stars.
But it’s not all about the stars.
Soon, news will likely come out about a UA offer to 2017 athlete Michael Onyemaobi, from Chaparral High School in Temecula. Before last week, Onyemaobi had no offers. Now he has one from California.
He’s the sort of diamond in the rough Arizona should get used to seeing. Dating to Williams’ time as a graduate assistant at Washington through his three-year stint at San Jose State, coaches in the area often will approach Williams first when they have a kid who hasn’t been recruited heavily from the onset.
Williams made a connection with Hawkins a few years ago when his son, four-star receiver Chris Hawkins, committed to USC over Washington, which he had been considering in large part because of Williams.
“He’s different,” Hawkins said. “He’s not all about the stars. Because he’s a great coach, he can see upside in kids to take those kids, recruit them and still be able to get what he wants to get out of them.
That’s not how it works at USC or UCLA, where the star rating “comes first, then they work their way down,” Hawkins said.
“If you look at Donté’s kids he’s gotten at San Jose State, they’re all decommits from USC, UCLA. He’s stealing kids at San Jose State from Pac-12 schools, so that’s just amazing what I think he’ll do at an Arizona.”
•••
Williams was hired on Jan. 17, and went right to work.
That night, he already offered four-star 2017 corner Thomas Graham, from Rancho Cucamonga, a scholarship.
Then, his week went something like this: Monday night, he was in Portland, Oregon, visiting 2016 linebacker target Kaelin Himphill; the next morning, he touched down in Los Angeles, offered four-star corner Chacho Ulloa, an ex-Stanford commit, a scholarship — with the help of staff analyst Miguel Reveles — and visited with other targets over the next day or so, adding an offer to four-star 2017 defensive end Hunter Echols; Wednesday, Williams and Yates flew to Sacramento for a last-ditch effort at 2016 four-star safety Lamar Jackson, who the Wildcats have long believed was beyond their reach; early on Thursday morning, Williams flew out to Little Rock, Arkansas, to check in with 2016 defensive line commit Markell Utsey, tweeting out a screenshot of the result of an NBA 2k16 game he just completed with Utsey, showing no mercy in beating Utsey by 20 points; finally, because of a snowstorm, Williams was forced to drive all the way to Dallas for a flight back.
This weekend, with help from Williams’ recruitment, both Ulloa and Himphill were on campus for an official visit. Now the Wildcats have a legitimate shot at Ulloa, who before committing to the Cardinal hadn’t even really considered Arizona.
Williams changed that, he said.
“It’s a great hire. He’s a great coach that gets DBs (defensive backs) right,” Ulloa said. “They’re in the top of my list, for sure.”
Williams hasn’t been made available to the media since he was hired, but in a video feature with Arizona Athletics, he talked about his love for video games and said “when you want to be a great coach and recruiter, you should be relentless, and ‘no’ is not just going to be a word that we take. It just doesn’t exist.”
Williams didn’t take no for answer when he was a coach at San Jose State. Now he’s at Arizona, and in the Pac-12. Watch out.
“If you’re taking kids to San Jose State, a place that has a high school stadium, no real support, no anything,” Hawkins said, “if you can do that, then sky’s the limit for him.”
“San Jose State really was not big enough for him. And just to be completely honest, I’m not sure Arizona is big enough for him.”
