Here is a list of the scholarship linebackers on the current UTSA roster who will not be juniors or seniors this fall:
Soph Josiah Tauaefa
That's it. Once the 2017 signees are added he should be joined by Joshua Booker-Brown, Donovan Perkins, and - if he qualifies and makes it to campus and doesn't start his collegiate career at running back - De'Marco Guidry. Those are all good players coming in, and Tauaefa should be around until the end of the 2019 season, but depth will need to be built for the coming years for when La'Kel Bass and Marcos Curry (who made a combined 117 tackles in 2016) are gone.
None of UTSA's current 7 commits for the 2018 class are LBs, and some of the seven uncommitted LBs they've reportedly offered aren't realistic targets. A pair of LBs I like who I would offer up as worthy of an evaluation (paging Jacob LaFrance!) are panhandle area athletes Cade Barnard (Seminole) and Kiante McCoy (Sweetwater), whose teams happen to share a district and played each other twice last season.
Cade Barnard, who measured in at 6'2" and 220 pounds at The Opening Cleveland in April, was an unknown coming into the 2016 season, having transferred to Class 4A Seminole from tiny Melrose, New Mexico, where he'd helped his school win two 8-Man state football championships, won the long jump at the 2016 2A New Mexico state track meet, and averaged 21 points and 8 rebounds per game in leading the basketball team to the 2016 2A state championship.
He had a great 2016 season at Seminole in his first year of playing 11-man Texas football, making 193 tackles, 11 tackles for loss and 3 sacks and earning Permian Basin Defensive Player of the Year honors from the Odessa American. He also played guard on Seminole's basketball team, which was literally a last-second three-point shot away from reaching the 4A state tournament this past season.
Despite the gaudy stats and his playing for the same team as coveted D1 recruit Reese Moore (now a Texas commit), Barnard's recruitment took a while to get going and he didn't receive his first offer until this March. He now holds some 15 offers, mostly from a collection of G5 schools (Bowling Green, Colorado State, Nevada, New Mexico State, UNT, Texas State, and UTEP), Ivy League programs and service academies. A few P5 teams have kept in touch with him, such as TCU, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M, but none have offered him as of yet. He has said he wants to commit to a "high level" academic school, and while UTSA certainly can't claim the academic reputation of some of the other schools that have offered, he's a good enough player and athlete that he should warrant an honest look. I mean, it's not like Nevada or Texas Tech are known as the Harvard of the west.
While I've been aware of Cade Barnard since last year when Reese Moore himself told me about him, Kiante McCoy has only recently been known to me. A linebacker and sometime fullback/H-back commonly listed at 6' and 200-210 pounds, McCoy was a star player in 2016 for a Sweetwater team that reached the 4A Division II state championship before losing to a historically great West Orange-Stark team. McCoy was good enough as an underclassman to make first team all-district at linebacker in both his freshman and sophomore years, and as a junior in 2016 he was his district's defensive player of the year. He's also a multi-sport athlete, having earned all-district honors in baseball and playing on Sweetwater's varsity basketball team since at least his sophomore year.
I've found no recruit profiles online for McCoy, who really isn't being recruited by anyone, doesn't have a bevy of D1 college coaches following him on Twitter, and only named Tulsa when I asked him if he'd attended any college camps this summer.
He looks like a college linebacker to me, and at worst one who should be a borderline D1 prospect. Take a look at his junior film. It's a fun watch.
Soph Josiah Tauaefa
That's it. Once the 2017 signees are added he should be joined by Joshua Booker-Brown, Donovan Perkins, and - if he qualifies and makes it to campus and doesn't start his collegiate career at running back - De'Marco Guidry. Those are all good players coming in, and Tauaefa should be around until the end of the 2019 season, but depth will need to be built for the coming years for when La'Kel Bass and Marcos Curry (who made a combined 117 tackles in 2016) are gone.
None of UTSA's current 7 commits for the 2018 class are LBs, and some of the seven uncommitted LBs they've reportedly offered aren't realistic targets. A pair of LBs I like who I would offer up as worthy of an evaluation (paging Jacob LaFrance!) are panhandle area athletes Cade Barnard (Seminole) and Kiante McCoy (Sweetwater), whose teams happen to share a district and played each other twice last season.
Cade Barnard, who measured in at 6'2" and 220 pounds at The Opening Cleveland in April, was an unknown coming into the 2016 season, having transferred to Class 4A Seminole from tiny Melrose, New Mexico, where he'd helped his school win two 8-Man state football championships, won the long jump at the 2016 2A New Mexico state track meet, and averaged 21 points and 8 rebounds per game in leading the basketball team to the 2016 2A state championship.
He had a great 2016 season at Seminole in his first year of playing 11-man Texas football, making 193 tackles, 11 tackles for loss and 3 sacks and earning Permian Basin Defensive Player of the Year honors from the Odessa American. He also played guard on Seminole's basketball team, which was literally a last-second three-point shot away from reaching the 4A state tournament this past season.
Despite the gaudy stats and his playing for the same team as coveted D1 recruit Reese Moore (now a Texas commit), Barnard's recruitment took a while to get going and he didn't receive his first offer until this March. He now holds some 15 offers, mostly from a collection of G5 schools (Bowling Green, Colorado State, Nevada, New Mexico State, UNT, Texas State, and UTEP), Ivy League programs and service academies. A few P5 teams have kept in touch with him, such as TCU, Texas Tech, and Texas A&M, but none have offered him as of yet. He has said he wants to commit to a "high level" academic school, and while UTSA certainly can't claim the academic reputation of some of the other schools that have offered, he's a good enough player and athlete that he should warrant an honest look. I mean, it's not like Nevada or Texas Tech are known as the Harvard of the west.
While I've been aware of Cade Barnard since last year when Reese Moore himself told me about him, Kiante McCoy has only recently been known to me. A linebacker and sometime fullback/H-back commonly listed at 6' and 200-210 pounds, McCoy was a star player in 2016 for a Sweetwater team that reached the 4A Division II state championship before losing to a historically great West Orange-Stark team. McCoy was good enough as an underclassman to make first team all-district at linebacker in both his freshman and sophomore years, and as a junior in 2016 he was his district's defensive player of the year. He's also a multi-sport athlete, having earned all-district honors in baseball and playing on Sweetwater's varsity basketball team since at least his sophomore year.
I've found no recruit profiles online for McCoy, who really isn't being recruited by anyone, doesn't have a bevy of D1 college coaches following him on Twitter, and only named Tulsa when I asked him if he'd attended any college camps this summer.
He looks like a college linebacker to me, and at worst one who should be a borderline D1 prospect. Take a look at his junior film. It's a fun watch.
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