Recruiting Breakdown: UVa's in-state efforts must improve

Virginia’s new coaching staff is just a few months on the job but this summer will be a pivotal one. The Cavaliers currently have just one commit in their 2023 recruiting class, a group that is sure to increase in number when the summer recruiting season picks up. UVa’s coaches continue to circle the country in search of top prospects to add to the roster but the building has to start at home where the Wahoos haven’t been as successful on the trail in recent years.

Today, we take a look at the current state of recruiting in the Commonwealth, identify some good and bad trends, and try to determine where things are heading for Tony Elliott and his staff.

Part of UVa’s lack of success in the Commonwealth is the perception. In order for fans and others around the game to think a team has a stranglehold on a state, landing some of the most notable players in the region is pivotal. Those players receive an outsized amount of attention both locally and nationally. One five-star guy can draw as many headlines as a bunch of three-stars combined, and that’s the case all around the nation.

And while the Hoos have found some in-state talent and have fended off some quality programs to sign some of those players, the ones they have landed are down quite a bit in the state rankings.

In Virginia’s 2014 class that drew quite a bit of praise, UVa landed two of the state’s top three players in Andrew Brown and Quin Blanding, and the other, Da’Shawn Hand, went to Alabama. The Cavaliers also landed two more players in the state’s top 10, with Jamil Kamara and Steven Moss signing with the Cavaliers. After that, Virginia’s recruiting tailed off significantly, as Mike London’s teams kept losing and the regime was then replaced by a staff that won more but didn’t recruit at an elite level.

In 2015, UVa landed the state’s fifth-ranked player, linebacker Jahvoni Simmons. In 2016, UVa didn’t land a player even close to the top 10 in the state (Joe Reed was the highest-ranked, around 19th in VA). The same was true in 2017, when the top in-state signee was Lamont Atkins. It happened again in 2018 with Grant Misch, who had a 5.5 ranking, leading the way. Ben Smiley was a solid pick up 2019, but again wasn’t in the state’s top 10. UVa lost Jimmy Christ to Penn State the following year when the highest-ranked signee was Elijah Gaines. Four-star lineman Bryce Carter finally broke the streak, signing with the Hoos as the sixth-best player in the state after reclassifying. UVa basically struck out altogether in 2022, with Davis Lane its top-ranked in-state signee, well outside the Commonwealth’s top 25.

Noticing a trend?

The Wahoos have been in some of the recruitments they didn’t win but didn’t challenge for enough of the state’s top players, and simply didn’t keep enough of them home, over the past decade or so. And while UVa has had almost no success landing players ranked in the top 10 of the state rankings, the program has also seen a drop off in success with the group ranked 11th-25th or so in the Commonwealth. Even in years where the Hoos missed out on top-ranked players, they were usually able to win enough recruitments in that group to field rosters full of in-state talent. Since that 2014 class, UVa has landed just 10 of the state’s top 25 players each year, total. And only twice have the Cavaliers landed multiple top 25 players in that timeframe in a single year; in 2015 (Simmons and Juan Thornhill), and in 2021 (Carter, Jay Woolfolk, and Logan Taylor).

With UVa struggling to land top talent within its borders, the logical conclusion would be that the other Power 5 program in the Commonwealth must be cleaning up. Not so much, however. There’s no doubt that Virginia Tech has landed more of the top in-state talent more consistently than UVa has over the last decade but the Hokies too have lost some battles to other schools.

It seems that more than ever, the top players in Virginia are choosing to take their talents to another state for their college careers.

In the last eight cycles, these are the schools that have landed top-five talent in the state:

North Carolina, Penn State, and Ohio State: 6 players

Florida State: 4

Clemson and Virginia Tech: 3

Alabama, Notre Dame, and Oklahoma: 2

Auburn, Duke, LSU, TCU, Tennessee, and Virginia: 1

Some of those commitments make plenty of sense. Ohio State, Clemson, Alabama, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and LSU are national powers or at least in the ballpark. FSU certainly was when the Noles reeled in most of their top Virginia players. Virginia Tech is an in-state option. One player going to places like Tennessee, Auburn or even Duke doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things.

The schools that have done UVa the most harm by taking in-state talent are North Carolina and Penn State. Starting with the Nittany Lions, they are certainly a national or at least regional football brand that matters. They have had great success getting into northern Virginia and taking top talent a few hours north to Happy Valley. Since James Franklin arrived, PSU has had a presence in Virginia. That is unlikely to change, at least until there is a coaching change, though Tech’s Brent Pry did some of the heavy lifting on those Virginia recruitments so moving on to Blacksburg might change things a bit.

But UNC’s presence in UVa has gone from annoying to alarming. In many ways, UVa and UNC have similar football programs. Both schools could be described as basketball schools and they have had similar levels of success in recent years. UNC has the edge in facilities and has the Jordan Brand behind it, but perhaps what the Heels have done best is sell a specific vision to players from Virginia and elsewhere.

Already in this cycle, they have poached Nolan McConnell and Joel Starlings, two of UVa’s top targets, following visits to Chapel Hill. UNC has won several head-to-head battles against UVa, most notably with five-star Zach Rice last year. The Tar Heels grabbed six players from Virginia in the 2022 class, including a five-star and three four-stars.

The Hoos (and Hokies, also under new management) probably can’t keep Carolina from taking players altogether but they need to win some of these head-to-head battles for players that are looking at a specific type of school.

Perhaps the new football facility, along with the coaching staff will help. UNC taking a solid player or two from Virginia isn’t a big deal, but having them come north and get a handful (or more) is problematic.

UVa’s in-state recruiting needs some work, but it hasn’t been all bad in recent years. The Wahoos have done a nice job on several fronts, making connections in certain parts of the state and at specific schools. Under Bronco Mendenhall’s staff, UVa seemed to have less of a presence in the talent-rich Tidewater area and to some degree in Richmond. Both of those areas are concentrated with top prospects, so work will need to be done there moving forward. But the previous staff did a solid job in northern Virginia, the state’s most-populous area. Many of Virginia’s highest-rated signees from the Commonwealth have been players from NOVA, including Taylor and Gaines in the 2021 class. UVa has also had success in the “western” part of northern Virginia, grabbing players like Chayce Chalmers from Manassas, Misch and Tommy Christ from Sterling and most recently 2023 commit Cole Surber from Nokesville.

Virginia has also pulled talent from some of the state’s private schools. It’s a natural place for UVa to look for recruits, as many of these private schools have high academic standards and their cultures translate well to life at UVa. In recent years, the Cavaliers have mined schools like Woodberry Forest (Lindell Stone and Terrell Jana) for talent, and having former Wahoo Jackson Matteo there can only help with that relationship. But UVa has also taken players from NOVA’s private schools; both Taylor and Gaines played at Episcopal in Alexandria. Woolfolk came to UVa from Benedictine, and Carter came from a Life Christian Academy program that has churned out quite a few top prospects.

UVa’s previous staff put down some roots at the private schools and seemed to have a decent amount of success in NOVA. The new coaches will need to continue to cultivate those relationships while also getting UVa in the frame in other parts of the state that haven’t been as fruitful of late.

With all that said, how much does it matter how well UVa does in Virginia? It would be foolish to say it doesn’t matter at all, but UVa has had as much or more on-field success while struggling to get players from VA as the Wahoos did when they were more successful in that area. Now, with the transfer portal, high school recruiting might not matter as much as it once did, period.

But here’s one thing to keep in mind: It’s easier to keep your players home than it is to keep them when they’re not from this area. Looking at UVa’s transfers, most of the players that have left are from far-flung hometowns rather than local prospects. There have been exceptions of course; Joe White (Virginia Beach) jumped in the portal after the season. P.K. Kier (Winchester) went to Kent State and R.J. Proctor went to Oklahoma. But most of the Virginia signees stayed on the roster, or are still on the roster if they are more recent signees. That matters quite a bit when building a roster.

The new staff is still too new to really allow us to evaluate their in-state recruiting chops. The initial returns were promising when the staff got to go on the road and make their presence known at high schools around the Commonwealth. That hasn’t transitioned directly into recruiting wins yet, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

We also have to recognize the situation on the ground: Recruiting is more complicated than it used to be. Travel is easier. It’s easier for families to go see their sons play further from home. More teams are on TV now, too, which “shrinks” the game a bit as well. UVa’s in-state rival also has a new staff that will be energized and ready to turn the tide in-state. And then throw NIL in the mix, and it’s hard to figure out where Virginia fits in, even within the borders of their own state.

But the program will be better off if the new coaches can make staying home “cool” again. Carolina has been able to come into Virginia and sell players on its brand, even with middling on-field results. The Cavaliers have to sell themselves, and if they can convince players that UVa is taking football seriously, a player can achieve all of their goals on and off the field, and do so playing in their home state, they will start to win some of these battles that have gone the other way. And the more that happens, the more energy there will be around the program within the state, which helps create a cycle where more players want to come to Charlottesville because others have before them.