Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 3 | January 2020

22 Inside Hokie Sports VIRGINIA TECH ’s 2020 football recruiting class was short on numbers, but long on quality. Head coach Justin Fuente gave that basic summation when discussing the class at a news conference on the morning of Dec. 18, as he and his staff signed 14 prospects to letters-of-intent on the first day of college football’s three-day early signing period. The staff also added a graduate transfer in former Kansas tailback Khalil Herbert, who rushed for 1,735 yards and 14 touchdowns during his Jayhawk career. “I’m excited with what we’ve been able to add to our class,” Fuente said. “There’s a lot of dynamics in this. There are a lot of people that have helped us on this campus and continued to sell Virginia Tech. Obviously, we didn’t have a lot of room—we’ve got a pretty darn good football team coming back. I’m excited about that. We did feel like at running back that we needed to get immediate help with the rest of our squad, and I think we did that. Also, we planned for the long term. Next year’s class is going to be really, really large. We tried to plan a little bit ahead.” Tech’s 2020 recruiting class took on a national look, as the staff signed players from nine different states, including three from Georgia, two from Florida and two from Texas. The staff also added an individual player each from the states of Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The class included just the lone prospect from the Commonwealth—defensive back Lakeem Rudolph, a 6-foot-4, 202-pounder from Green Run High School in Virginia Beach. That concerned some among Hokie Nation because the great Tech rosters of the past have been built on Virginia prospects, but recruiting continues to be an ever-evolving process. Advances in technology allow coaches to reach prospects from all over the country. Plus, a lack of scholarships available forced the staff to be selective. “Quite honestly, there’s some we didn’t get, and some we didn’t like,” Fuente explained of the Hokies’ in-state recruiting. “That’s the truth. I was pretty slowwith some things because of the small numbers [of scholarships available]. I was pretty hyper sensitive to make sure we did things the right way because of our numbers situation. I’d say it was all those factors. I don’t think it’s going to be anything indicative to come.” For sure, the signings of defensive lineman Robert Wooten and Alec Bryant from Texas provided an interesting twist to this year’s recruiting. Those two are believed to be the first high school prospects from Texas to sign with Tech, with a couple of the Hokies’ staff members taking advantage of connections to reel in the Lone Star State standouts. “It’s just a different world than it was five years ago, quite honestly,” Fuente said. “It’s just so much easier for people not just to communicate, but to look and see and touch and feel programs and colleges without having been there. I think we’re just beginning to scratch the surface of what we can do. I think we have a beautiful product here to sell, and I think it is going to appeal to people a little bit farther away in areas that haven’t been historically productive for Virginia Tech. Part of that is a function of technology, and part of that is it’s a little bit easier to sell your school from a distance than it used to be. “It’s not the end all, be all of recruiting [recruiting in Texas]. I understand that, but it’s pretty hard to argue the statistics when you talk about the quality of players and programs that are down there. I think people would really be taken aback if they got a close look at the quality of programs in that state. I think it would be shocking to some people if they really got to get on the inside and see what it looks like.” Bryant, a 6-3, 230-pounder from Pearland, Texas—a suburb of Houston—comes to Tech as the highest rated of the Hokies’ recruits. Defensive line and running backs the Head coach Justin Fuente and his staff recruited nationally to find the best fits for the program, Alec Bryant Robert Wooten