Or it will be in mere hours.
I really haven’t written much about it in January. Mainly because there has been little noise on the matter with Pitt. The recruiting finish has been a trickle of late verbals that seem solid enough, but aren’t exactly the stuff of headlines.
Pitt had a late commit with scholarships opening up as some attrition occurred.
North Allegheny High School football player Ryan Schlieper has backed out of a verbal commitment to Maryland and will instead play at Pitt.
Schlieper, a 6-foot-5, 275-pound offensive lineman and a member of the Post-Gazette Fabulous 22, had committed to Maryland last summer. But he always held out hope that Pitt might offer a scholarship.
It’s one of those instances where he has always wanted to be a Panther, but it wasn’t happening so he accepted the Maryland offer. Then...
“The reason why I decommitted from Maryland and committed to Pitt is because [playing at] Pitt was a long-time, childhood dream of mine,†Schlieper said. “I always wanted to play for Pitt. I’ve grown up watching Pitt and rooting for Pitt.â€
Schlieper, whose high school is less than 30 minutes away from Pitt’s campus, insisted he had nothing against the Maryland program. He just couldn’t turn down the opportunity to play for his hometown team.
“I was completely happy with Maryland and thought it was the greatest thing ever,†Schlieper said. “I was done with everything in recruiting. Then all of a sudden I get a call from Pittsburgh. And I thought to myself, ‘this is your school, this is where you wanted to be and what you’ve wanted to do all your life.’â€
Maryland was, well, a bit miffed.
Schlieper, who primarily played left tackle this season, said the process of decommiting was difficult.
“It’s a long process,” he said. “A lot of (Maryland) coaches wanted to talk to me. I got an earful a couple of times.”
Another call went to Seneca Valley quarterback C.J. Brown, a rival of North Allegheny in the Quad North, who committed to Maryland last year and plans to sign with the Terrapins.
“I felt like I let C.J. down, but being the quality type of kid he is, he said, ‘No hard feelings.’ “
So Pitt gets a 3-star OL who really wants to be here.
Not that Pitt had everything go their way. Isaac Holmes, a 4-star DT out of New Jersey, was down to Pitt or Maryland. Then he threw everyone a curve by making a last minute decision to go with Rutgers.
Josh Evans, a NJ safety, still hasn’t made a decsion. The 3 or 4-star recruit still has Oklahoma and Florida after him. So there is that to watch.
And because recruiting never stops, Coach Wannstedt has already been working to see if he can get a QB for the 2010 class.
I’m told Pitt football coach Dave Wannstedt was in town a couple of weeks ago to keep in contact with Wilson QB Tyler Smith, who had attended the Panthers’ quarterback camp. With his size and powerful arm, Smith will certainly be one of the most sought-after quarterbacks in Pennsylvania next fall.
Nothing about him on the recruiting sites.
Meanwhile, here’s a good story on one of Pitt’s better recruits for this class, DE Jack Lippert.
“He’s a much different person on the football field,” said Rees Judge, a Central Dauphin defensive back and Jack’s best friend. “It surprises me a lot. It just doesn’t seem like him.”
Jack can be mellow as an autumn sunset. Until kickoff.
Then the fire rages.
“There really isn’t anything better than coming up behind a quarterback when he doesn’t know you’re there and just laying him out,” Jack said.
“Once he gets his first sack or his first big hit, that’s it,” Judge said. “He’s just out of control. He’s just on from there.”
For three bone-jarring seasons, McNamee and his staff stationed Jack on the defensive line’s weakside edge, where there was no tight end to hinder his path to would-be passers. Jack registered 19 sacks and 121 tackles over his final two seasons.
“He had that ability,” McNamee said, “to just have a huge impact on the game.”
All this from a kid who only began playing football in seventh grade, a blip in today’s youth-sports-crazed culture.
Jack burned for football earlier, but his local midget league forbade him to play.
“I was always too big,” he said.
Pitt also comes in for a mention down in Florida in a story on recruiting and building relationships with the HS coaches.
[Cypress Bay coach Mark] Guandolo has coached in South Florida for more than 20 years. He’s built relationships with college coaches across the country. One such connection is with Pittsburgh coach Dave Wannstedt, who signed one of Guandolo’s former Chaminade-Madonna stars, Gus Mustakas.
Mustakas is having a solid career with Pittsburgh, something that stuck in the mind of one of Guandolo’s current players, Jason Douglas.
Douglas, a running back, says that the combination of his ability and Guandolo’s help were key in gaining Pittsburgh’s interest. Once the Panthers offered, he sat down and spoke with his coach — a Pennsylvania native — about what was next.
“The first thing Coach G did was give me the pros and the cons about Pittsburgh,” Douglas said. “He told me about how it was a football town, and he told me about the different weather and the school. He really helped me out a lot.”
Probably told the kid a lot about the weather.
