Top punter/place-kicker prospect Bradley Pinion trekked to Virginia Tech last Saturday to compete in Tech’s first one-day camp of 2011. The Northwest Cabarrus (Concord, N.C.) rising junior, considered by ChrisSailer.com as the nation’s #1 kicker in the 2012 class, discussed his performance in Blacksburg as well as where he currently stands on Tech’s target list.

“I felt like I did pretty good,” Pinion said of his performance in Blacksburg. “My field goals could’ve been a lot better. I didn’t have good field goals at all, but I thought I did a good job punting and on kick-offs.”

On the next level, Pinion says he projects more as a punter and kick-off specialist rather than field goal kicker. In those areas, he averaged 39.7 yards per punt in 40 tries last season as a sophomore. Seventeen of 20 punts ended up inside the opponent’s 20-yard line. And he booted 37 of 50 kick-offs for touchbacks.

“Everybody tells me I have really good hang time as a punter,” Pinion said. “For my age, I have really good hang time. I’m also really good at pinning the ball deep. I’ve been doing a bunch of corner kicks. My coach also tells me the ball is really hard for players to catch. There were four dropped punts against us last year.”

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