bleedCrimson.net will be conducting weekly interviews with Aggie head football coach Hal Mumme during the 2008 season. Coach Mumme talks about his 2008 recruiting class including his JUCO signing class.
bleedCrimson.net: Can you talk about the kids you signed in December?
Hal Mumme: They're all here now doing a pretty good job.
There's Seth Smith, running back originally from Oakland, CA, College of the Sequoias, Seth was a terrific player in an offense very similar to ours. He was a Rivals Top 10 JUCO running back, one of the top ten running backs in junior college in the nation. He was a preseason All-American in '07. He really does a great job of catching the ball, running with the ball, pass blocking, he can do everything we want to do. He's a bigger version of Tonny Glynn, real fast guy. He has really good speed.
Marcus Anderson is a wide receiver. The best way I can describe Marcus is he's a Derek Dubois with a lot more speed. He's been clocked in the 4.3s. Those are pretty reliable times because he was a track guy at Austin LBJ and we know a lot about that program over there. He's caught 84 balls in his career so far, he's also a return guy. In high school, he was kind of a halfback so he's real good after the catch.
Chris Romero is a defensive lineman, he's 6'4, 257. Went to Snow College, he's from Las Vegas, Nevada. He was a linebacker that they moved down, Coach Dunn likes to have those kind of guys on the d-line. He's here now working real hard and we're looking forward to getting him in the spring.
Justen Alford is a linebacker from Dillon, South Carolina, Feather River College, 6'1" 221lbs, kind of a middle linebacker type of guy, will get in there and mix it up and compete. He's also here working hard right now.
Jonathan Davis is a guy that we signed and then resigned today. He was supposed to come, didn't quite get all his academics done so he had to go back to JUCO and finish up two more classes so he's not here right now. Again he's kinda like Chris Romero, he's a d-lineman who can run, looks like a linebacker playing d-line.
Joe Suder, he's a really good looking kid. He's 6'6" about 340. He's a terrific athlete. For our fans, the best way to describe him is, he's a well built guy who resembles, size wise, Mike Martinez, probably a little more athletic. He was a great downhill skier in his younger days and shotput guy. Originally had five real big-time visits, Pac-10 schools, ACC schools, signed with Duke and went there a little while and then transferred back to junior college. He's a really good player, we like him a lot. He's here right now.
David Norman is also here now, he's the other offensive lineman we took. Also a very athletic guy, very coachable, he's from Mesa College in San Diego, 6'5", 300 pounds. He was a really good baseball player in high school, he runs a 4.9 40, he's got great speed. We got a lot more athletic at tackle with both of those guys. Both of those guys are really good students.
LaVorick Williams is a true freshman out of Odessa Permian High School, originally signed a track scholarship with Texas Tech, decided not to go and stayed home for the fall and decided he wanted to play football and got back into the recruiting battles. He's out there working right now, Matt Walters tells me in a year or so he'll be as fast as Chris Williams. He was a 10.4 100 meters guy in high school. He's a tall kid, he's 6'3" around 170 or 175 pounds, a little skinny right now, just kind of a green freshman but really terrific speed. He caught a lot of balls at Odessa Permian, set several records for them in the receiving category. Of course Permian is a Friday Night Lights school kind of a famous place to be from. He's played about as good of high school football as you can play.
Nick Paden is a middle linebacker 6'3", 235 pounds. He has great speed and is really a good closer. He's from Butte Junior College in Folsom, CA. Really a terrific player and a good size guy, good middle linebacker candidate.
Jason Scott is an outside linebacker kind of guy, he's 5'10", 200 pounds. He's a 4.6 40 guy from Pasadena City College. He was a First Team All-Conference player out there for them. He's a real coachable guy, great person on and off the field. Good leadership skills. We really felt good about him. He's a little undersized for a linebacker but the kind of guy that Coach Dunn likes.
bc.net: Can you talk about the guys you just signed and who will be coming in this fall?
HM: Marquell Colston, running back, he's 5'9", 205 pounds from Modesto Junior College. He's originally from Little Rock Arkansas. He rushed for right at 1,000 yards this year, and had right at 500 yards receiving. He has great hands, he can play in the slot, he can play in the backfield. He's an unselfish kid, he'll block and he'll run, catch and do everything we need him to do. He has great vision and great speed, he's a 4.3-4.4 40 type guy. He runs the opening leg on a junior college sprint relay team that ran a 40.4 last year in the JUCO finals. Their only loss last year as a sprint team was to the Japanese national team so they're pretty fast. He runs the opening leg on it, he's a fast guy. He won't be here until the fall but we're looking forward to working with him.
Todd Lee is a running back out of Baton Rouge Catholic, he's 5'9" about 175 pounds. That's where Julius Flemming is from, Travis Minor, Warrick Dunn, all those guys are from Baton Rouge Catholic. Terrific coach, terrific program. Todd, I think he has about 4 or 5 B's on his whole high school transcript, he was Academic All-State, he was First Team running back All-District in that league. He was a Baton Rouge Advocate All-Metro Team, playing in the All Star game down there. Rushed for 1,000 yards this year. Anybody that plays tailback for Baton Rouge Catholic is a player. He also was a great DB the year before. He's a really exciting guy to watch, great student and he'll find a place to play, there's no question. He's a fun guy to watch with the ball in his hands. Also a great track guy, runs the 100m and 200m and is a great triple jumper, that's kind of his specialty in track but really will do real well in the state finals down there in Louisiana.
Donavan Roberts is another track guy, also a running back out of Mansfield, TX. 6'0", 193 pounds, he was their option quarterback this year but he was their running back the two years before that. He's a guy that had originally committed to Missouri and then he broke a bone in his foot and so Missouri pulled off on him at the last second. He had committed to Missouri in the summertime and we just kind of slipped in and got him so he's a good find for us. He ran a 10.5 100m in a regional track meet last year, he's a fast guy, good running back, great vision. He can do a lot of things too because he was an option quarterback too.
Victor Johnson is another running back/defensive back kind of guy, he's 5'11", 200 pounds out of Mission Bay High School in San Diego. We kind of found him late. Coach Dunn got on him late and really liked the way he played DB so we'll probably start him out as a defensive back but he was really good both ways, he was All-Conference on both sides of the ball for them for two years running. He's a real versatile player, also a track guy at San Diego. We really like him, he's an honor roll student, All-Academic team for four straight years. Good size kid, runs good, runs track for them, runs the 100m and 200m for his high school. Good speed and really a good player.
Jordan Davenport, I'm sure all of our fans will be pleased with this, we found a kicker that can kick it out of the end zone. He's also a good punter. Of course we had to replace [Jared] Kaufman this year so he can come and do both duties. He was perfect on his extra points, he was 6-11 on field goals and he had a net punt average of 35 yards or so, the main thing we recruited him for though, all of his kickoffs, I think he had something like 53 of them, nearly all of them were 10 yards deep in the end zone which in our rules will put them high in the air and on the goal line and that's about as good as it gets at this level. The upside with him I like is he's kind of a tall angular kid and he was a soccer player so he's got a lot of reps kicking the ball. He's got a good leg whip. He's a guy who I think is going to grow and get stronger and be even more effective. Plano West High school in Plano, TX is where we found him and we're proud of him. He's also a really really strong student, very high in a competitive class of about 600 in his high school graduating class and he's in the top part of it. Good student, good kicker, good punter.
Anthony Smith is a defensive lineman that Coach Dunn found in Mesa, AZ, Red Mountain High School. He's really an athletic d-lineman. Really strong kid, really strong and fast. For a d-lineman, he runs the 100m and 200m for his high school and he runs on the sprint relay team as a d-lineman at 6'1, 220 pounds. He's a little undersized but Joe Lee likes those kind of guys and he made a lot of tackles. He's a really softspoken kid, great student, had a really high SAT score, 3.4 GPA, really a nice kid who runs good and plays hard.
Jeremy Little is a wide receiver from Shreveport, LA and he grayshirted for us, sat out this fall and he's here now working out. He's from Evangel in Shreveport. That's where [John David] Booty (Southern Cal) and all those guys are from down there. Great program of throwing the football, he caught 73 passes and had 11 touchdowns his senior year. He was All-District, All-City, All-State, was Offensive Player of the Year in his league. He's 6'1", 180 pounds, kind of a frail looking guy right now but he's working hard and we think he's gonna do good. He's kind of a possession receiver but he's got good hands and we expect him to find a place to play.
Ruben Martinez. I'll tell you what Ruben did, Ruben came down here in the summer time to our camp and just lit it up. Put on a show. I mean he can catch, he can run, he can block. He's 6'1", 200 pounds, he could play tight end, he could play linebacker, he's going to start out as a fullback for us because that's what he primarily played in high school. He's got great grades, he's been All-State two years in a row. He took his team to a winning record, we're just really proud of Ruben. He was an early commitment for us, he came down to camp, we really liked him and offered him on the spot and he thought about it for a little bit and committed to us. He had a great season and done everything he's supposed to do, we're just really excited about having Ruben come down here and play for us. Like I said, he can play a lot of places. But we'll start him out at fullback and see how it goes from there.
We also had, because of the APR situation, we had pushed forward some guys, we had three guys that played for us last season that are technically in this signing class because we gave them scholarships after they got here. Davon House, of course was a great freshman corner for us. Rhyan Anderson who is a University of Miami transfer, did a terrific job for us and then Ben Bradley who redshirted for us and is a good looking defensive back who really had a good year of growth and playing on the scout team, a good redshirt year.
bc.net: You also have a quarterback coming in who's going to grayshirt, Trevor Walls?
HM: Yeah, Trevor is gonna grayshirt and we have a receiver named Joe Cordova from Atlanta, GA. Both of those guys are going to come in January of next year. We wanted to push the quarterback situation back because I didn't want to have them stacked up behind J.J. [McDermott] and we wanted to take a kicker, so we decided to take a kicker instead of another quarterback. We did offer a guy in-state and tried to get him but he went out of state to a BCS school [Editor's note: Coach Mumme is referring to Landry Jones who committed to Oklahoma]. We decided if we couldn't get somebody that is that high up on the recruiting totem pole that we would just push it back a class. Trevor is a great looking kid, we're excited to be working with him. He's the valedictorian of his high school class, he's 6'6", he weighs 225 or 230. He reminds me a lot of Chase Holbrook on film.
bc.net: Out of this class, who do you think can make the most immediate impact for you?
HM: I think all of the JUCO guys will and I think most of these guys are gonna play. Unless we get some guys that are injured, I think most of these guys are going to come in and play. The young guys it's always a question of strength but it just so happens, like Anthony Smith, one of his plusses is that he's probably the strongest guy in his high school and his high school coach said he's really a mild mannered kid off the field but on the field he's the meanest guy he's ever seen. We're kind of hoping he'll come in and be ready to tee it up. The good news is we've got nine of them here right now and they're working and getting ready.
bc.net: Is this the first year that you've been able to hand out a full complement of scholarships with the APR situation?
HM: Actually we had the last three penalties this year, we kind of spaced them out. We had 22 total, we still have one left over, we're saving it for after spring to let Joe Lee kind of shop a little more. If we have any particular need we might go back out for one more guy. There's four guys, we grayshirted one guy, Jeremy Little and we had the other three that I told you about that we kind of robbed this year's class. But basically we should be out of the woods now after this year and be able to have pretty much between 18 and 25 guys every year. We signed 17 new guys and if we get one more that'll be 18 so that's the first class we've had like that.
bc.net: Have you set a date for the spring game?
HM: Yes, the 26th of April is the spring game.
bc.net: Having a chance to go back this offseason and look at the film is there anything that jumped out at you that maybe didn't show itself during the season was something you could say "hey we did a really good job with this" and that you can use as a springboard into the spring practices?
HM: There were several things. I thought that we developed some guys because of the injuries really. We got to develop some guys that are going to pay dividends for us this year. At the time it was heartbreaking to sit there and have to watch guys like Chris Williams and guys like that stand on the sidelines but I think getting Wes Neiman up to 40-something catches was huge. He's a terrific young player. Developing some young talent like that, it was painful to do but it was good and it will help us this year.
