Penn State fails to grab a top recruit
Tailback Broderick Green reversed himself and went to Southern Cal. The Lions will have 21 new players next season.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. - Penn State hit 21 on its 2007 football recruiting class, but it was far from the jackpot the Nittany Lions had been hoping for.
While all of the Lions' recruits who had committed orally signed letters of intent yesterday, the NCAA-imposed deadline, Broderick Green did not.
The 6-1, 230-pound tailback from Arkansas reversed field again and announced at an afternoon news conference in Little Rock that he would be going to Southern California.
Green, the only true tailback the Lions had been pursuing after Harrisburg's LeSean McCoy opted for Pitt, had recently visited Penn State, as well as Ohio State, after wavering briefly on his oral commitment to USC.
Counting yesterday's signees with the few players who'd already formally agreed to play for Joe Paterno - the first two junior-college transfers in a decade and three high school seniors who had completed their academic requirements and enrolled - Penn State's recruiting class totaled 21.
Still, despite addressing concerns along the offensive and defensive lines and adding depth at linebacker and tight end, the Nittany Lions were left without a marquee recruit.
Paterno, who canceled yesterday's planned news conference, and his staff didn't land a single five-star player. USC, by way of comparison, recruited six of Rivals.com's five-stars, and 10 of Scout.com's.
Green was a four-star running back in both services' rankings.
As a group, the Lions' prospects were rated in the top 25 by the two most influential recruiting services. Rivals.com ranked the Lions' class 24th. Scout.com had it 18th.
Florida had the most success, according to both services. USC (2 Rivals, 3 Scout), Tennessee (4, 2), Texas (3, 4) and LSU (5, 5) rounded out their top fives.
Two Big Ten rivals, Michigan (10, 10) and Ohio State (16, 16) also got higher marks than Penn State.
Without Green, the Pulaski Academy star, the Nittany Lions almost certainly will turn to two redshirt seniors, Austin Scott and Rodney Kinlaw, to fill the sizable shoes of Tony Hunt. Hunt finished as Penn State's second all-time leading rusher with 3,320 yards.
The strength of the Nittany Lions' recruits appears to be on both lines and at a position where they seemed loaded already, linebacker.
Paterno apparently felt it was so important to find offensive line help that, after years of lamenting the trend, he signed a pair of junior college transfers - Ako Poti (6-5, 300) from San Francisco Community College, and Nerraw McCormack (6-5, 290) from Nassau County (N.Y.) Community College.
Other O-line signees were four-star guards Stefen Wisniewski (Pittsburgh) and J.B. Walton (New Berlin, N.Y.), and four-star tackles Josh Marks (Catawissa), and three-star guard Quinn Barham (Durham, N.C.).
They will help fill in the holes on a line that performed inconsistently in 2006 and lost three regulars to graduation - Levi Brown, Chris Auletta and Robert Price.
The defensive line signees included three good prospects, Devon Still (Wilmington), Chimaeze Okoli (Virginia Beach) and Kevion Latham (Greensboro, N.C.).
The star of the class, again according to the scouting services, was cornerback Chaz Powell, rated in Rival.com's top 100 prospects.
Linebackers Chris Colasanti (a four-star from Bloomfield, Mich.), Andrew Dailey (Massilon, Ohio) and Nathan Stupar (State College) will add depth to a unit that returns Dan Connor and Sean Lee.
Paterno had been planning to meet with reporters on his recruiting class yesterday afternoon. But on Tuesday night, a school official said the coach would be of town and unavailable.
The official said that coaches are not permitted to be on-site with recruits on signing day and that Paterno was in the Philadelphia area.