One of the defining accomplishments of the Kansas football team’s offseason was building a recruiting pipeline in Arizona from virtually nothing.
The Jayhawks, who have just one native of the Copper State on their current roster (that would be cornerback Kwinton Lassiter, who actually attended high school in Lawrence at Free State) have earned commitments from four Arizona denizens in the class of 2024 to come join the squad. And according to Rivals, KU’s defensive pass game coordinator Jordan Peterson has been the primary recruiter on all four of Aundre Gibson, Jonathan Kamara, Carter Lavrusky and Deshawn Warner.
Peterson’s early forays into Arizona — he started carving out a footprint in the state in earnest in the spring of 2022 — have already been accompanied by some success, but another favorable turn of events went his way when the Big 12 Conference added Arizona and Arizona State (along with Utah) Friday night.
Peterson said Sunday he has already had some of his strongest high school connections reaching out to say “Hey, let’s go, this is exactly what we wanted.”
“Now obviously that changes the narrative a little bit as far as, OK, now they get to play in the Big 12, they come to Kansas, and they could play a couple games back home in front of their friends and family,” Peterson said.
It’s another way that recruiting in Arizona has gradually gotten easier for the assistant coach, and it coincides with another boost afforded by KU’s recent on-field success. When he first arrived in the state, Peterson said, his approach relied on spending more time at each school than he had in a dozen years recruiting in Houston, because he had to get to know the personnel and the teams. Without positive results at Kansas to fall back on, Peterson had to lay out head coach Lance Leipold’s past history of turning other programs into winners.
After last year’s six-win season and a bowl berth, he now has something resembling proof of concept to show new classes of Arizonans.
“Are we where want to be? Absolutely not,” Peterson said. “But it does give a little more credibility to the message that you started with in the very beginning prior to having the bowl season.”
The hope is that more protracted success will lead to a stronger pitch to future classes of Arizonans. For example, KU has in recent months also been courting 2025 cornerback Jamar Beal-Goines, a younger teammate at Desert Edge High School of Gibson, Kamara and Warner’s.
The Big 12 news provides an additional selling point.
“So, fired up about it, we’ll see where we can continue the momentum,” Peterson said.
Henry Greenstein/Journal-World photo
