Mohamed Toure once transformed Pleasantville football. Now, he’ll play for a national title.

Mohamed Toure may have the chance to lift a trophy in the final game of his seven-year long college career.

Toure, a native of Pleasantville, New Jersey, will take the field alongside his Miami teammates as the 10th-seeded Hurricanes seek their first national championship since 2001 against top-seeded Indiana on Monday night (7:30 p.m., ESPN).

In his first year at Miami, Toure has been the anchor of a defensive unit that has allowed 14 points per game, the fifth-best in the Football Subdivision.

Toure transferred to Miami in May to utilize his final year of graduate eligibility after playing three seasons in six years at Rutgers. He redshirted, played through the pandemic-shortened 2020 season and suffered two ACL tears while with the Scarlet Knights, which makes Toure a seventh-year player.

But before Rutgers and Miami, Toure was a star at running back and linebacker at Pleasantville High School in Atlantic County.

“To see him play at a high level, and for them to be playing where they’re at right now, it’s just surreal to watch,” said former Pleasantville teammate Elijah Glover, now the school’s head coach. “It’s something I couldn’t imagine when we were 10th- graders.”

Toure and Glover, who played college football at Villanova, were freshmen when Chirs Sacco took over as head coach for the Greyhounds in 2015. Pleasantville had won just three games over the previous five seasons before Sacco took over, including winless campaigns in 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2014.

The Greyhounds went winless again in Sacco’s first season, but improved the following season to 4-6. In 2017, the program posted a 7-3 record behind a breakout season from Toure, playing both running back and linebacker. Glover recalls Toure’s 95-yard game-winning fumble return in overtime against Buena Regional High as one of the many moments where he realized his teammate had a future in football.

“It didn’t happen by accident,” Glover said. “That was the first game of the season. Junior year, he went crazy. It was just like, ‘He’s for real.’”

In his senior season, Toure led the Greyhounds to an 8-3 record, rushing for 981 yards and 11 touchdowns, while adding 69 tackles and five sacks on defense. He was named to the all-South Jersey first-team by the Inquirer in 2018.

The personal accolades for Toure reflected an improbable turnaround for Pleasantville’s football program. Sacco, who is now the athletic director at Hammonton High School, said Toure’s leadership and commitment to Pleasantville was a crucial part of the program’s transformation.

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“It would have been easy for him, as the type of player that he was, and is, to leave and go to an established program,” Sacco said. “To stay and build something, I always said, ‘it’ll mean more to you, especially down the road. It’ll mean more to your friends and your community. It’ll mean more to the school and this program.’ And I think when you see what he did by staying and essentially helping transform a program, you don’t get much better leadership than that.”

Toure’s teammates and coaches at Pleasantville knew that the linebacker would end up playing college football at a power conference school. Toure had explosive plays on the field, but he was also a force off it.

“You definitely could see it, just in the weight room,” Glover said. “He was doing stuff that none of us could do.”

Sacco said the recruitment process for Toure started “slow,” something the former head coach attributed to the program’s losing reputation. But it picked up during Toure’s junior year, as he led the Greyhounds to a winning season for the first time in a decade.

Toure became a three-star ranked recruit and had 17 scholarship offers before he decided on Rutgers. He took a redshirt year in 2019, but in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, Toure led the Scarlet Knights with 4.5 sacks in their nine-game season.

He built on that performance with another 4.5-sack campaign in 2021.

Toure was set to be a key piece for new Rutgers linebackers coach Corey Hetherman in 2022, but his season was derailed by an ACL tear in the spring. He returned for the 2023 campaign, serving as a team captain. Toure recorded 93 tackles and 4.5 sacks in 13 games that season.

Toure planned to finish out his college career at Rutgers in 2024, while playing alongside his younger brother Famah, a junior wide receiver. But another preseason ACL tear led Toure to change his plans. He entered the transfer portal after the 2024 season, looking to use his final year of eligibility elsewhere.

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“Both the situations were very unfortunate, but I also think that he utilized that,” Sacco said. “Instead of feeling sorry for himself, he just refocused that energy into, ‘This is what I need to do to get back and better.’”

Toure reunited with Hetherman, his former coach at Rutgers, in Miami. Hetherman spent the 2024 season as the defensive coordinator in Minnesota before joining Mario Cristobal’s staff in the same role ahead of the 2025 season.

Toure, who leads the Hurricanes with 73 tackles, has been a key piece of Hetherman’s defense.

Toure has stepped into a bigger spotlight as Miami made its improbable run to the national championship game.

The 10th-seeded Hurricanes became the first double-digit seed to win a game in the playoff with a 10-3 road defeat of No. 7 seed Texas A&M. Without Toure, it could have been the Aggies moving on.

Toure recorded eight tackles in the game and kept Texas A&M’s Rueben Owens II from catching a potentially game-tying touchdown pass with 28 seconds remaining. Toure delivered a vicious hit on the goal line to break up the pass, and the Hurricanes secured the win two plays later.

Miami then pulled off a 24-14 upset against No. 2 seed and defending national champion Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl quarterfinal. The Hurricanes beat No. 6 seed Ole Miss, 31-27, in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal, with Toure recording four tackles and a sack.

Their path through the bracket has led the Hurricanes back to Miami, where they will have an opportunity to compete for a title on their home field. While the Hurricanes will likely have the advantage of a home crowd on Monday, Toure will also have a number of fans cheering for him in Atlantic County.

“It means a lot to the community,” Sacco said. “I know it means a lot to the younger kids to be able to, look at the school and say there’s somebody playing on Monday night for the national championship that went here, and recently.”

For Glover, Toure’s steps to the national spotlight are a chance to show the high schoolers on his team, including Toure’s youngest brother Sekou, that effort and dedication can take them anywhere, whether in football or in life.

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“It’s definitely something I’m using just to let them know, like, ‘Yo, it’s possible if you just put the work in and stay down and let things end up how they’re going to be for you,’” Glover said. “Everybody won’t be a Division I recruit, that’s just impossible. But they can end up anywhere they want to be.

“That’s really the message, besides it being Miami or football. It’s really like, ‘You could go on a big stage of anything you want in this life if you just follow these steps.’”