(Even) More Local Football Recruiting: Veii Commits, Terps Announce Transfer

I'm getting fatigued, talking about this every day. Check it out, it's another local football commitment: Jacquille Veii, an athlete from Gaithersburg. And I'm quite a fan of his announcement method:

"First off i want to thank everyone who has helped me through this recruiting process, my family, coaches, friends, everyone, want to thank all the coaches from the colleges that have recruited me and offered me, but I feel this decision is best for me and my family and I AM COMMITTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND ! GO TERPS!!" Veii stated on his Facebook page.

Good stuff.

Veii's a two-star across the board, and could end up at running back, defensive back, or maybe even receiver. I'm guessing DB is the most likely, probably cornerback, but it could ultimately be decided by where else Maryland can pick up depth. He only just recently received a Maryland offer and jumped on it immediately, choosing the Terrapins over Boston College, iowa, and a few other mid-majors. Like most of Maryland's commitments, he does not lack for speed: his listed 40 is 4.49, but he looks faster than that on video - if that's an electronically timed 40, then he's likely in the 4.4 range hand-timed.

Anyway, an interesting point here is that Maryland took awhile to offer (probably doing it at a camp, actually) and, once they did, he jumped on it immediately. I've heard this line of thought before - that because Maryland is being so stingy with their offers, it'll mean a lot to recruits when they actually do pull the trigger. They respect it more. I'm not sure I buy that on a large scale (if a kid already has big offers he's just as likely to think that Maryland is "disrespecting" him and write them off), but it sure does look a bit like that (the late offer being good, that is) happened here.

In related news, Locksley acolyte Ricardo Young (an H.D. Woodson product formerly of Virginia Tech, New Mexico, and Iowa Western C.C.) has officially transferred to UMD, with an announcement coming from the university. Meanwhile, IMS has a ($) profile up on Deon Long, which seems to confirm that he, too, will be coming to town. We've known about these transfers for quite some time now, so that's not too big of a deal. It does mean, however, we finally get an answer on eligibility: Young won't be eligible until 2013, at which point he'll be a redshirt junior.

That's been a question for a long time, given his winding path to get to College Park. It would've been a wonderful development had he been eligible right away, because he would've been able to challenge C.J. Brown and prevent a redshirt burning when CJB inevitably gets popped by a head-hunting linebacker. He'll have to sit out a year instead, which makes it an interesting situation. I'm guessing - and hoping, for Randy Edsall's sake - that the quarterback situation will be settled by the time he comes eligible; either Brown has taken hold of the spot, or he's gotten hurt or underperformed and one of the freshmen has secured it (or at least secured second-string). If Brown's the starter, that's not a big deal for Young, who'll still have a year of eligibility once CJB's moved on; if the freshmen see time and look good, though, Young may find snaps squeezed. I doubt he'll change positions, nor would Maryland want him to, but I'm not sure he'll be getting the snaps he wants.

Anyway - that's another three spots accounted for on the scholarship chart, but that's the lovely thing about having 20-odd transfers: you're never going to run out of room. Veii is commitment #14 for Maryland now, with all but 2 of them local. The good news is that the base of Maryland's class is already in the door - the staff doesn't need to scramble to fill depth. They can instead focus their efforts on the big fish remaining in 2013, hopefully enabling a strong finish. Although, at the pace this is going, they'll probably be done with this class by next weekend.