The Hurry-Up is your nightly dose of updates from the Ohio State football recruiting trail, keeping tabs on the latest from commits and targets from around the country.
Day praises recruits and families
We have already mentioned a couple of times the impact that Ryan Day and his staff’s approach to togetherness has had on the commits in his 2021 class and their families.
Jantzen Dunn told us about how Day and his staff have organized several Zoom calls between them, the entire 2021 class and their families. Those calls often involve playing games together and engaging in general fun conversation. That has led to what Dunn calls “a tight group.”
“That’s why we love him,” Dunn later added about Day. “He’s just different, and he tries to keep us as tight as possible.”
Last week, Day reciprocated a lot of that love during a Zoom press conference with reporters, praising the all-around job by recruits and their families during a difficult, unprecedented time in which they can’t see any of them face to face — at least not in person.
“I think they’ve been really good,” Day said. “They’ve communicated. They understand how much, from the jump on this thing, they mean to our program and our future. They’ve stuck together, and they’ve been great. We’ve been recruiting some great families and great people.”
Unfortunately, for those same families, it’s looking like we are still a long ways away from them being able to meet with their future coaches and their sons’ future coaches in person.
So it appears those big Zoom calls will be the strategy moving forward for a while, and even though it’s been tough Day believes that’s the best way forward.
“I think it’s gonna be hard to have visits throughout the fall just with everything going on, to bring different families on campus and recruits on campus, and they’ll wanna stay and spend time with our players,” Day said. “I just think (with) the more exposure, it’s probably not prudent to do that. I think that’s a challenge, and the frustrating thing for the recruits is they haven’t been able to visit here in a long, long time. It’s been dead for months. It’s almost gonna be a calendar year.”
Day: No changes to recruiting calendar
Even though that continues to be an issue, Day is not an advocate for changing the recruiting calendar. He hopes that everything remains on the same timeline despite the difficulties.
“That’s a challenge, but I don’t think you can change the recruiting calendar,” Day said. “I don’t think you can change the signing day. I think it has to be what it is so that these guys can come in mid-year. They’ve worked really, really hard to get to this point, and they’ve set up their schedules for that. But a lot of conversation still has to be had about all of that. But as I sit here right now, that’s how I see it.”
Part of Day’s reasoning presumably is 1) so that he can sign his potentially historic recruiting class as quickly as possible to get them in the fold and 2) if Day gets his wish, and early enrollees get immediate eligibility to play for the Buckeyes in the spring, he will be able to get them rolling in Columbus a lot sooner and get them better acclimated to life as a college player.
Boone comments on offer
After losing borderline five-star defensive end Tunmise Adeleye, the Buckeyes this week sent out another offer to a 2021 strongside defensive end, showing their interest in Florida commit Justus Boone, a borderline top-300 player and a top-20 SDE in the country.
Boone told Eleven Warriors that Larry Johnson is one of the biggest pulls to the Buckeyes and that the pair's relationship is new but is “going in a good direction to be stronger. (I'm) thankful to say the least (about the offer).”
Johnson's reputation for developing defensive ends precedes him, as the fact that he developed Chase Young, Joey Bosa and Nick Bosa “definitely stands out the most,” Boone said.
Boone says that Johnson and the Buckeyes are excited about “my pass rush ability, along with my physicality and, most importantly, my character.”
McCullough's athleticism
When writing about the impact of the Buckeyes' latest linebacker commit, Dasan McCullough, I wrote that his skillset provides the latest example – in addition to C.J. Hicks – of Ohio State moving toward bringing in essentially positionless players for the future of its defense and that McCullough's athleticism is one of the main traits that Al Washington and Co. love about him.
This is the type of thing I was referring to:
Ohio State commit @Dasan2022 getting close to joining the 12ft club! Dasan can simply do a lot of things other players his age and size cant do! Freak athleticism!! pic.twitter.com/CTnmY1Qacw
— All In Sports (@AISportsKC) August 19, 2020
Tshabola moves up
Buckeye offensive tackle commit Tegra Tshabola saw a major fall in July in the 247Sports Composite rankings, going from No. 69 overall to No. 143.
On Thursday, though, Tshabola found himself back up at No. 126 overall following an update in the Rivals rankings.
Tshabola is the highest-ranked committed offensive lineman on the Rivals board, coming in at No. 108 overall.
