MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — West Virginia coach Neal Brown was admittedly excited about the prospects of the 2021 recruiting class when asked about the future in December.
The class was going to be his first full recruiting cycle in Morgantown and would provide him a level playing field with his competitors to build connections and pursue talent on the trail.
Well, with 11 commitments in the class to date, it turns out his thoughts could be a bit prophetic.
The Mountaineers are not only well ahead of typical pace in quantity with those 11 commitments, but far surpassing in the quality department, too, as the program pieces together one of the surprises across the national landscape. That was bolstered two weeks ago, adding top target Kaden Prather, a wide receiver from Maryland, who held over 40 scholarship offers from major college programs.
“West Virginia has two 4-stars in this class and many talented three-stars like Prather, this could end up being one of the program’s best classes in years,” Rivals.com national recruiting analyst Mike Farrell said. “The Mountaineers finished ranked 28th in the 2020 Rivals.com team rankings and a push into the top 25 for the first time since 2013 is possible.”
It’s been a long absence for the Mountaineers from the top 25 of the national rankings and the program has only managed it twice since records started being kept in 2002 at Rivals.com. But this year certainly has a chance to meet that mark, especially if the program continues to hit it big on the recruiting trail.
WVU was aggressive in getting prospects to campus early and often and that paid off in solid connections that were forged over the last year and change. That has allowed the coaches to not only get their top targets to campus, but get them in the fold in the recruiting class, too.
That aggressive approach has helped the program through a difficult time with campus visits currently on shutdown due to the coronavirus as the Mountaineers have added seven commitments since the ban on in-person recruiting contact began. And many of those are highly talented players.
The work is far from done, as WVU currently has room to fill an entire 25-man class this cycle, but it is never a bad thing if you’re landing the names at the top of your recruiting board.
Brown was excited coming into this year and it certainly seems there was reason to be.
