amauri pesek-hickson

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So Signing Day is in December now. It was… yesterday? Tuesday? Something like that. Nothing happened except the ejection of Amauri Pesek-Hickson from the class; Pesek-Hickson landed at Kansas. Pesek-Hickson seems pretty pissed off. His coach is less so:

Coaches typically bring the hammer down on schools they feel have mistreated their players during the recruiting process. Pesek-Hickson has now publicly stated his belief that he was mistreated by Michigan. Yet when Sims was asked if there will be any issues with Harbaugh recruiting Blue Valley North in the future, he shot down the notion without equivocation.

“Oh no, no, no, no,” Sims replied.

“As far as my feelings with Coach Harbaugh, he has always been upfront and honest with me. He has always done an awesome job every time he has come into my school. He is a great coach from my vantage point.”

“So, I think moving forward, I don’t see any issues that would ever keep Coach Harbaugh out of any one of my schools.”

Webb asserts that Michigan made it clear that a grayshirt was a possibility, and… I mean, when they don't sign you in December* what do you think that implies? Do you receive this news and think "this is fine"?

Michigan probably shouldn't have offered the kid but rather encouraged him to keep his options open past the early period. But also the father's story doesn't pass the sniff test.

*[Quinten Johnson did sign, FWIW, but it was kept quiet so his high school could do a signing day thing.]

2019 basketball recruiting isn't done. Michigan's setting up a visit with Lester Quinones, a 6'5" shooting guard:

Among the schools on him the hardest?

“Maryland, LSU, Michigan, Memphis, Georgia, Ohio State, Pitt, and Miami, been texting a lot.”

Visit plans?

“Michigan is the next visit. It’s getting planned, there is no exact date."

Quinones has a commitment timeline of "late spring," which should give Michigan enough time to determine whether they're suffering attrition, whether it's NBA or otherwise, and thus have a spot for him.

[After THE JUMP: Kansas crocodile tears, Nik Stauskas as an NBA badminton, wyd Tim Drevno]

It appears that Michigan has chosen to part ways with previously incoming athlete recruit Amauri Pesek-Hickson, who spoke to to Rivals' Josh Helmholdt ($).

After the players that declared for the NFL draft date passed, Harbaugh called me and told me that “we might have to go to plan B”. I asked why, and he told me that the spots they have open for the 2019 class they want to fill with DT and DE grad transfers and he wants me to reclassify and come in as a 2020 prospect.

Those of you with a Rivals account can take the link to get more specifics about what Michigan told Pesek-Hickson before they changed their story to the above. Those without can ask a friend with a Rivals account (please don't post paywalled info here; I've done enough already).

UPDATE: Nick Baumgardner of the Detroit Free Press has more details after speaking to APH's father:

At the time of his pledge, Michigan put a plan in place for Pesek-Hickson – who has scored a 30 on the ACT – to bring his grade-point average up during his fall semester at Blue Valley North to make sure there was no doubt about whether or not he’d be eligible to get into U-M academically.

Pesek-Hickson was under the impression from Michigan that prep school would only be an option if his academic situation wasn’t good enough, his father said.

APH was a Ronnie Bell-like prospect, a three-star athlete from Kansas (745th on the 247 composite) and basketball player who only played football for one year, and whom Michigan was looking at as an athletic defensive prospect. Though he played safety in his one high school season, at already 6'2"/215 we expected him to grow into an outside linebacker in the way of Devin Gil.

He did not sign a letter of intent on early signing day with the rest of his class, but it was believed at the time to be only a formality. At the time safety commit Quinten Johnson told MLive that he was holding off to sign with his high school teammates but there was no indication why Pesek-Hickson had also not signed; early reporting on him suggests academics were highly unlikely to be an issue.

It appears that Michigan was in fact slow-playing him while figuring out their numbers, and did not indicate as much to Pesek-Hickson. It's certainly not a good look for Harbaugh and his staff; I'd say this is much worse than the Swenson debacle, which occurred over months and came down to a failure to communicate. In this case Pesek-Hickson seems to have been misled about whether he had a spot in this class and was given two days before Signing Day to find other options. While APH doesn't have to make a decision on Signing Day, his options at this point are probably limited as most schools that might have had interest already have scholarship commitments to the players they recruited instead.

Michigan's need for outside linebackers in the 2020 class is now even greater, and the staff's credibility with borderline recruits remains an issue of concern.

We did the offense already. Before we get into the defensive side of contextualizing the 2019 recruits against every Michigan guy since Bo, I want to give a shout-out to some other Tableizers. Jacedeuce gave me several suggestions I incorporated into the money graph, and Bo McReady (son of Bennie, godson of Oosterbaan) created this magnificent visual that you can spend the rest of vacation clicking over. For example if you select all the New England states you can see this view…

…that shows just seven players from the region from 1990-2013, and nine players in four classes since Don Brown arrived. Mouse over the 2016 and 2017 towers and you'll find Sean McKeon, Tarik Black, Andrew Stueber, Kwity Paye, and Ben Mason from the first two classes, all of whom are working out better than their rankings suggested they would. On the other hand recruiting rankings do strongly correlate with the likelihood of playing in the NFL. I've recreated his NFL chart so you can mouse over the individuals:

Our fun had, let's dive into the defense:

[Player-by-player discussion, after The Jump]

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