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Inside the War Room with Jordan Arcement: Part II

Jordan Acrement has helped the Hoos land several Louisiana players, including Jonathan Horton.
Jordan Acrement has helped the Hoos land several Louisiana players, including Jonathan Horton. (Photo courtesy of UVa football)


Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series of conversations with senior scout Jordan Arcement, a Louisiana native who is at the heart of the success Virginia has had recruiting “The Boot” in recent years. Don't miss the first installment where Arcement talks about how he got to UVa and how the process works.


Tell me about the first kid that you remember really making an impact on and helping get to UVa. My guess is that it’s Mike Hollins, probably the biggest fish too. But when you got that first one to say yes, what was that like? Take me through that and what it was like for you to have him take that leap of faith?

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So, when I got here and we were recruiting Mike pretty hard, his communication wasn’t the greatest. He was hard to get up with. You’d talk to him here and there but really you’re talking to people in his circle and they would kind of talk to us about where things were. He came on his official visit—I think I had gotten here in the summer, I think July—he was here at one of our first games. I feel like that was big for him and for me. Sitting in the stands, I remember it like it was yesterday. We were watching the game and talking to him about the offense and how he would fit in and how he could be the leader of the movement, ‘LA-to-VA’ was kind of my big thing when I came here, trying to start a wave. Seeing it and him going through the process, and then him saying yes? There was no better feeling. Fast forward to this past season, he’s in the games and he’s getting some carries and was actually scoring some touchdowns, I was probably more excited than Mike. I was on the sideline just jumping around like ‘I told y’all! I told y’all!’ It was a great feeling. He was all mature about it but I was losing it. I’ll never forget it.


From Mike to a guy you obviously had a big hand in recruiting to UVa and that’s Dontayvion Wicks. What do you remember about his recruitment? How did things play out? What was his situation like before you guys got involved in that one?

It happened fast. I would say it was probably around Thanksgiving, maybe even a little after, when we were going through and scraping, just looking all over the the area for guys because we needed receivers. We were just trying to find guys who needed to be seen. And I actually saw that Dontayvion got an offer from New Mexico. His recruitment wasn’t much then. He had some FCS options in Louisiana and then he got that New Mexico offer. The name looked really familiar to me. A friend of mine, Nate Crutchfield, who isn’t here anymore, the name rang to him and he asked me if I remembered him and I said I did. So we flashed back to his film and we rearranged his highlight tape. That’s one of the things that Nate taught me about this personnel deal, presentation matters. So we put it together and the first person we showed was Justin (Anderson, director of player personnel) to see if he was in and he was. Next we went to Coach (Marques) Hagans and he was all in, too.

So then it was about figuring out now to make that connection with the kid and do it without trying to tell everybody. See, we knew if you threw a Power 5 offer out there to him, man you’d draw a lot of attention that early. And one month [before early signing day] doesn’t seem like it’s that long but in recruiting that’s an eternity. So it just became a little tricky in terms of keeping a relationship with him, deciding when to offer, when we could get him up for an official visit. His grades checked out, we sent Coach (Ricky) Brumfield down there to just verify everything. Coach Hagans went down there as well. And then it was just about building that relationship. Being from Louisiana, I’m young enough to connect to them but old enough that they respect me and so we kind of bonded. I just told him about the things I could see him doing, kind of similar to Mike, and when he got here it felt like home to him. We still have a great relationship now too. We talk a lot and I try to just keep helping him with that adjustment and I can’t wait to see what he does on the field this year. I think he’s in for a big season.


I wanted to talk about some of the guys in the 2020 class that just signed. But first I want to frame it. You guys had a good amount of success in 2019 and then again in 2020 obviously. At what point, as a recruiter, do you see the kids starting to notice what’s happening on the field? Is that something that you have to bring to them and really educate them on? Because in my experience, recruits don’t pay nearly as close attention to the on-field results the way most people would expect. 

Yeah I would say that the bigger the stage, the more likely they are to see it. So, the Orange Bowl helped a lot. As a prime time game that everybody was watching, that was big. People are automatically tuned in to a New Year’s 6 game. Other than that, it’s a lot of us giving that information to the kids. That’s where our graphics guy and our video guys do an excellent job of providing us with content we can send out on a daily basis. That plays a big factor. You’re informing them of the opportunities. Now, some kids are really good at doing their due diligence on top of it, doing their own research and things. But some kids you have to inform them and not just them. It’s their parents, their coaches, their family, maybe a trainer or somebody who is at their roundtable. But just kind of getting everybody who is involved or has some say in that decision, you want them all to have the right information and for them to be educated on what you have to offer. I would say that we do a whole lot of educating in terms of what we have to offer as a school, as a program, both on and off the field.


Does it ever surprise you how little these kids, who if you think about it they probably should know the most, don’t know about it?

It is a bit surprising and I would say that now, just being glued to their phones, they know what’s on Twitter and social media. So if the content of what happened in the game is on Twitter, the highlight or whatever the case may be, they see that. They know that. But I don’t know how much kids are really just sitting down and watching ball on Saturdays. There are a lot of those who do but like you said, people would be surprised by the the amount of those that don’t.


When we talk about the 2020 class, a lot of that was built at a time when you guys were just coming off a nice season and a win in the Belk Bowl, so there was even more to talk about with the program. You could talk to the recruits about a lot of accomplishments and momentum at that point. Did things change for you as you talked to these Louisiana kids about UVa? How much of an impact did the 2019 season have? Did the pitch change much?

It got sweeter. I really do believe this because I see it happening. It’s really not a pitch but it’s facts: Numbers don’t lie. You can look at Coach (Bronco) Mendenhall’s career and what he did at BYU and what he’s doing at UVa now. The improvement is clear. The proof’s in that pudding just in terms of the type of program he has and what he’s done over an extended period of time. That shows kids that we’re already right back to that. It’s not a sales pitch because the numbers are there. It’s about presenting that and letting them know that not only are we having success but we’re going to keep having more and more of it. So if getting on the football field and playing on a big stage is important to you, here’s the opportunity to do that, not to mention that you can get a degree from one of the best institutions in the country. It’s a combination, really. What’s interesting is that what resonates a lot with the Louisiana kids is that you’ll be playing at the same level of LSU but you’ll be getting a degree that’s better than Tulane. That’s something they can relate to because everyone in Louisiana relates Tulane to academics and LSU to football. That really does help them put together just what type of win-win it really is here.


So in this class, you guys signed three Louisiana kids in Brandon Williams, Donovan Johnson, and Jonathan Horton. Let’s start with Horton, who was really similar to Wicks in a lot of ways in terms of you guys finding him before he blew up. I’m guessing the way he signed, right there at the absolute end of the early period, was pretty intense.

We actually found Jonathan way back in the summer. It was during that time when there wasn’t as much to do and so you’re mining and going through lists and trying to just expand things. I saw him in a video on Twitter doing back drills at an LSU camp. They had him listed at 6-foot-5 but he didn’t have any film. So, I added him to the system we use and I put a note in there that we needed to come back and revisit this one in the middle of the season once we had some film. When I came back, it happened to be the day he dropped his mid-season highlights. And when it played, I couldn’t do anything but tap the dude next to me and tell him to look at the screen. I knew right then and there that he was a big time player. The first thing then was checking out his academics because it was a little bit of a red flag to me that he didn’t have any offers. So I got in touch with the coach, I heard that he was a great student and he told me he was actually really good friends with Reece (Beekman), our basketball commit. So, I knew then we had something. I showed Coach (Kelly) Poppinga, our outside linebackers coach, the film and he loved him and frankly he couldn’t believe that the kid didn’t have anybody on him either. And I knew the kid was going to blow up. I was really worried about that. I knew once we offered, he was going to get a lot of offers.

So, Coach Pop, he offered and I think that really meant something to the kid. Then over the next month, he picked up double-digit offers from Power 5 programs. Because I was his first point of contact, he associated me with UVa but he didn’t really like the process much and his communication wasn’t always very good either. I was the one on staff that he would really touch base with and we built a great relationship. He took four visits and right up until signing day, he was unclear on what he wanted to do. He was kind of overwhelmed with it all. Meanwhile, it was a stressful time for us too because we were really hoping to get him and we didn’t know if it would go into the second period. We thought if that happened, it would be tough for us to get him. He had told me on his visit that he had an uncle who played college basketball, someone he really looked to for advice. I had reached out to him and he gave me a call and we kept up communication. So when that time came [near the start of the early signing period], I was talking to the uncle and he wanted Jonathan to sign in the early period because he was in basketball at that time and he didn’t want him to get hurt and lose his offers. It was just kind of all meant to be: The uncle lives in Florida and during this time Jonathan was actually in Florida for a tournament so we were able to talk to them and we had until that Friday to get the letter. We sent the letter to his uncle, Jonathan signed it, and then his uncle faxed it back to us so we could send it to Baton Rouge to get his mother to sign it as well. We got all that done with only a few hours left until the period ended. One of the top kids in our class, man. It was just meant to be.


What was that like for you guys?

Stressful. Very stressful. That was a long three days, man. A lot of stress and just trying to get it done. I knew that he had a really good feeling about us and I think sometimes, it’s a blessing and a curse to get hot late the way he did. You don’t have a chance, then, in your underclassmen years to go around and visit campuses and find the fit. It’s all pretty rushed. Taking four visits back to back like that, it gets cloudy for kids sometimes. You can’t decipher which visit was what and how it felt. We just had to trust that we gave him the right information and that he knew that we would take care of him when he came here, that he’d have a chance to play and get a world-class education. I think that at the end of the day, having his teammate Reece Beekman committed to us really meant a lot and us offering him first, that really meant a lot too.


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