Mike Young was expected by most people to hire fellow Radford native Shane Nichols to his coaching staff at Virginia Tech.  Nichols played for Young at Wofford and helped coach Ja Morant at Murray State.  However, Nichols has no experience recruiting at the high-major level, and I would have considered that to be a very average hire.  Not a good one, and not a bad one, but an average one.  I said when this process started that the Hokies needed to get at least two proven recruiters on this staff, and had Nichols been hired, I would have been disappointed from that standpoint.

However, something caused Mike Young to go in a different direction, because he has hired Cincinnati assistant Antwon Jackson to complete his staff, which also features assistant coaches Chester Frazier and Christian Webster.  Jackson is a completely different hire than Nichols would have been, and quite honestly a big improvement. I now have what I wanted: two proven recruiters as assistants.  Or three, if you count Christian Webster, but opinions on him are more mixed that I’ve ever seen for an assistant coach.  More on him later.

Today’s article is only going to focus on the three assistant coaches.  It is not going to focus on support staff.  For today, I want to focus only on the recruiting positions.  When Mike Young was hired, he said that Virginia Tech needed to be strong recruiting its own region, meaning Maryland, DC, Virginia and North Carolina specifically.  His hires appear to go along with that concept.

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