On the surface, the comparisons are easy.
First, there’s the hair.
“I had it first,” Dashon Bussell says of his mohawk, which is bleached blonde like one of his former teammates.
Second, there’s the position on the field.
Bussell is a wide receiver in the 2018 recruiting class and was one of the standout performers Saturday at Ohio State’s first one-day positional camp of the summer.
“It was a really good camp,” Bussell said. “There was a lot of competition and I got to show some of my skills today against better cornerbacks than the RAS camp [in Fort Wayne, Indiana] last week.”
Finally, there’s the high school.
Bussell will be a junior next fall at Bishop Luers High School in Fort Wayne. Yes, the same school that produced Austin Mack, a freshman wideout for the Buckeyes who signed in the 2016 recruiting class.
The two were teammates there a season ago for the Knights where Mack starred before ultimately signing with Ohio State and enrolling in January. Now, Bussell is in the middle of a big summer and could be the next rising star out of the Fort Wayne power.
As things stand, Bussell currently has three scholarship offers — they come from Toledo, Western Michigan and Miami (Ohio) — but that could certainly change as he continues his summer camp circuit, which began at the RAS camp two weeks ago and continued at Ohio State last weekend. Bussell said he intended to camp at Indiana during this past week and planned to attend Irish Invasion at Notre Dame on Saturday.
Mack was in attendance at the Ohio State camp, watching his former teammate and giving him pointers, but he’s not actively recruiting right now. After all, it is still early in the process for Bussell, who is listed at 6-foot-2 and 185 pounds in his 247Sports profile.
“He’s letting me do my thing right now,” Bussell said of Mack.
At the Ohio State one-day camps, the upper-level prospects are invited into the indoor practice facility during the afternoon portion of the camp so that all of the top competition is in one place. Bussell was one of those Saturday and, as a result, got some tutoring from Buckeyes wide receivers coach Zach Smith as well as Mack and other Ohio State wide receivers who were on hand.
“[Smith] was telling me some routes to do on some DBs that he was watching,” Bussell said. “He helped me a lot with that part of it.”
Bussell said he did not get any face time with Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer on Saturday, but that could change in the near future if he continues to progress and becomes a player the Buckeyes target in their 2018 class. With a rather talented 2017 crop of wide receivers expected, the position may not necessarily be a top priority for Ohio State in 2018, but that’s still to be determined.
Right now, it’s only the beginning for Bussell. He only has three offers, but mentioned schools like Stanford, Notre Dame, Virginia and Purdue as those who have been in contact with him. He might be a player who is only surfacing on the Buckeyes’ radar.
“It’s a really good program and all the coaches really go for the players that they really want,” Bussell said of Ohio State. “They show you a lot of love.”
