Judging by the steady stream of recruits tweeting about their visits I expect a lot more soon
2024 football recruits seem to be leaking into the 2023 thread, so--unless there is a 2024 thread that I didn't locate, here's a good place for football news related to the 1st class recruited by Elko & Co.
At the moment, we've gotten 4 hard commits from current high school juniors. So far, it seems like a small, fast group...
This week, we've gotten 2 recruits:
Langdan Callahan, a 5'11" athlete or safety from Reagan HS in Pfafftown, North Carolina.
Hauss Hejny, a 5'11" QB from Aledo HS, Aledo Texas
In June 2022, we also got 2 recruits
Jayden Moore, a 5'9" WR from Loyola Blakefield, Towson, Maryland
Austin Stull, a 5'11" DB (and WR) from the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey
Judging by the steady stream of recruits tweeting about their visits I expect a lot more soon
We also lost our DC and already hired a new one. Not recruiting related but I didn't see it mentioned anywhere
I know nothing about anything but from uninformed POV that is a little worrisome. I was so impressed with our defensive toughness this past season - tackling, creating turnovers, discipline, avoiding giving up big plays - so I hate to hear about DC turnover. I know it is inevitable but still scary. Of course Elko knows more about defensive coordinating that most anyone so there's that...
Hauss Hejny is intriguing as a quarterback—he’s 5’11” but very quick and athletic. If he hits a growth spurt we might have another Daniel Jones on our hands. Looking at his background, dad was a 6’3” defensive end at TCU and mom was a 5’11” basketball player, also for the Horned Fogs, so there seems to be some height in the family. They are TCU season ticket holders so I’m sure the legacy draw will come into effect if he has a monster senior season.
Might seem worrisome on the surface, but Robb Smith left because he wanted to be closer to his family in Minnesota. Have they been there since his firing in 2018? I guess so.
"Robb and I have talked about him wanting to get back home closer to his family in Minnesota," Elko's statement read.
And we quickly picked up someone Elko knows who is an experienced coach, so hopefully will be a seamless transition.
I actually like the "leaving for personal reasons" over the alternative, but turnover can still be tricky.
Hejny is also quite a fast dude. Has clocked some good times. Seems like a good pickup, I think he also had an offer from Nebraska.
Father Jesse Hejny is a former TCU football player and currently successful businessman.Mother played basketball at TCU.https://gofrogs.com/sports/womens-ba...nne-hejny/3665
She was still in school when she gave birth to Hauss.
Geological Mapping for Energy Exploration.
https://www.jessehejny.com/#/technology/
Wow it moved fast off the main page.
I participate in a college football discord, and the regulars there had mentioned it, apparently he was not well liked at Minnesota or at Rutgers by the players. I don't know about that, but they found it odd he left Duke without another immediate job.
The rub on Santucci is he's a longtime Elko staff member, but he gets blamed for A&M not landing some highly rated linebackers they recruited. Ag fans are not known for being reasonable, especially as of late. General thought is that it almost doesn't matter because Elko is always going to have final say in the defense anyway, which is probably true.
Another day, another commit (no name yet):
https://twitter.com/CoachMikeElko/st...19453985677312
And now we have a name! Ahmad Breaux, a DE out of Ruston, LA who apparently lived in Durham for a period of time. Nice commitment message, looks like he is excited to be a Blue Devil!
https://twitter.com/breaux_ahmad/sta...25850831962114
Tomorrow is another big day for recruiting current high school juniors to Duke.
Current students might keep their eyes peeled for unusually large teenagers who aren’t (yet) burdened with schoolbooks and haven’t (yet) adjusted to the Duke gothic wonderland.
A bunch of the recent visitors can be found on the Duke retweet….
https://mobile.twitter.com/dufbrecruit
Fwiw, we’ve offered at least one guy from Aledo, Texas, who isn’t a quarterback. Davhon Keys is an all state linebacker. I guess there’s a reason that Aledo has won 11 state championships—something in the water, perhaps.
As for Keys, On3 is 90% confident he’ll go to Oklahoma, 247 is 100% sure he’s headed for Oklahoma State. Nevertheless, I think this photo looks pretty good:
F7AE4F8D-7431-4F3F-9B28-9FEB8FA6C80D.jpg
Yes, hit the re-set button. Yes, Smith is gone and we don't know why, BUT the defense is very very much Elko's thing, his DC runs the Elko defense, and Santucci (who is widely respected, despite what the cranks at College Station might have to say) has worked closely with Elko in the past. Smith did a good job running Elko's defense, and Santucci can be expected to do the same....young, smart guy. In short there is no "rub" on him.
I'm skeptical of football recruiting rankings, but I also enjoy recruiting, so here's something from Grace Raynor of the Athletic. In an article from last week, she mentions 2 interesting tidbits:
We've talked about how all 26 of our '23 signees followed through with their earlier commitments, which is really interesting and unusual and says a lot about them and about our coaching staff.
She also mentions that while none of of those '23 players is ranked in the top 750, 3 of our early commits for 2024 are ranked in the top 700. Even more striking, a review of 247 today indicates that all 5 of our early commits are ranked in the top 600 while none of our 2023 recruits is ranked in the top 800. As I recall, 2 of our 5 commits for 2024 didn't have stars last week, but now all have 3 stars.
Guess it's that well-known Duke bump.
Probably not enough data points for an actual trend, but it is certainly promising.
https://theathletic.com/4122743/2023...g-signing-day/
https://247sports.com/college/duke/S...tball/Commits/