Kansas University’s football team has received National Letters of Intent from 21 incoming players on Wednesday in what coach Mark Mangino called a class that met “our needs at every position on the field.”
There were few surprises during this year’s signing day, an uncommon trend in the dog-eat-dog world of recruiting.
“I think we took some extra precautions to deal with kids of character,” said Mangino, who led the Jayhawks to their first winning season since 1995 with a 7-5 mark this year and a 42-13 victory over Houston in the Fort Worth Bowl.
“Character is an important factor in our signing of players, there’s no question.”
In fact the only real surprise came when linebacker Jeremy Terry — a 6-foot-1, 190-pound linebacker from Belle Glade, Fla., who is rated as one of Florida’s Top 100 prospects — notified KU coaches recently that he would become a Jayhawk.
All of the recruits that former Kansas recruiting coordinator Dave Doeren targeted stayed true to their word to KU.
Anthony Webb, a 6-0, 175-pound defensive back from Glenn Heights, Texas, who is rated as a four-star recruit by Rivals.com heads the class made up of 11 offensive players and 10 defenders.
Rivals.com rates KU’s class 37th in the nation and seventh in the Big 12 Conference, ahead of Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State, Baylor and Colorado.
Also among the signees were three of the top four recruits from the state of Kansas, including running back Jake Sharp — the Sunflower State’s No. 1 ranked high school senior by Rivals.com. The Jayhawks also inked nine highly recruited players from Texas and three from Oklahoma.
Two of the signees in the class of 2006 — quarterback Todd Reesing and defensive back Olaitan Oguntodu — graduated early from their respective high schools and will join the Jayhawks for spring drills which begin March 11.
In addition to Wednesday’s high school signees Kansas signed four junior college players — Rameses Arceo, Blake Bueltel, Marc Jones, and Mike McCoy — in December.
“I’m very pleased with this year’s recruiting class,” Mangino said. “We met our needs at every position on the field. We now look forward to developing these players at the Division I level.”
– See tonight’s 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. 6News broadcasts, Thursday’s Journal-World and KUsports.com for more coverage of KU’s newest recruiting class.
KU’s 2006 signees