The Hokies had a record-setting recruiting month in July. Between the July
5th commitment of OL Blake DeChristopher and the August 1st commitment of LB
Barquell Rivers, 18 additional players committed to the Hokies, giving Tech an
amazing 20 verbals in 27 days. With the Hokie recruiting list swelled to an
unprecedented 22 commitments on the first day of August, that brought up a lot
of questions. We’ll answer some of them in our latest “Road to Signing Day
2007.”

First, a little housecleaning. In addition to the 20 players that came on
board in July, there was a 21st player, Florida LB Hunter
Ovens, who committed, but Ovens has backed off and wants more time to think.
The Hokies have asked Ovens to “greyshirt” if he comes to VT, meaning
that Ovens would sign his LOI in February of 2007 but wouldn’t enter until
January of 2008, categorizing him as a 2008 recruit.

This makes sense for Tech, because Ovens, you’ll recall, is an excellent
baseball player who may get drafted high enough that he’ll play baseball instead
of football. Instead of leaving Ovens as an unknown — will he be part of the
2007 recruiting class or not? — the Hokie coaching staff wanted to push him
out of the 2007 class and slot him as a 2008 recruit. This way, whether Ovens
plays baseball or not, the Tech staff knows one thing: he won’t be a 2007
recruit. That helps with the numbers crunch.

The greyshirt request gives Ovens pause, though, so he retracted his verbal
for now. We hear that the Tech coaching staff thinks he’ll re-commit, probably
within the next few weeks. We also hear that he probably won’t go high enough in
the baseball draft and will opt for football instead. We’ll see.

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