The 2018 Ole Miss football recruiting class couldn’t have taken a much harder hit than it did last Sunday night. So what’s next for Ole Miss football and coach Matt Luke on the recruiting front?
Ole Miss football recruiting has been on code red since last Sunday night when interim head coach lost two major commitments within one hour. Thankfully the past five days have resulted in a far better result. No we haven’t gained any new commitments. However, we haven’t lost anymore either. There have been many Ole Miss football fans which have been studying the recruiting front and rightfully so. It is obvious to many of us coach Luke has managed to suppress any further de-commitments in the past week.
Now that most high-school teams have begun their fall camps, many commits have their eyes set on their senior seasons. Recruiting, as important as it is, will be placed on the back-burner for many high-school players until the middle of the season. Sure, we’ll still see dozens of commits on the Rebel sidelines taking official visits. However, many of those will be banking on padding their own high-school numbers in hope of a better offer.
What Luke Faces
Ole Miss Rebels Football
When Matt Luke was named interim head coach at Ole Miss, his individual responsibilities multiplied exponentially. Of course, recruiting is a very important aspect of head coaching and Luke was already a solid recruiter.
While losing three of ten recruits seems like a disaster, de-commitments are just a part of the game when a dramatic coaching change is made. Even more so when it’s this close to the season opener.
Although both Blaine Scott and Israel Antwine were close to Freeze and cited him as the reason they were committed to begin with, Luke has to fill in the gaps. Coach Freeze is gone and the Luke era has begun.
While it’s never easy to recruit as a new head coach it’s made even tougher by the tag ‘interim’. Young men want stability in a college program and it has been anything but stable in Oxford.
Wants And Needs
Currently Ole Miss football recruiting has seven commitments. Just seven. This places us at the bottom of the SEC at this point with a class ranked 80th in the nation. Of course, losing three commits in eight days knocks you down the pecking order quite a bit. While this unacceptable under any other condition, Luke gets a pass on what has happened. However, he has done well to negate further recruiting defections.
Prior to Luke taking over as head coach, we saw the early push to go after defensive lineman. With Wesley McGriff and Freddie Roach on staff I can believe we will see a continued focus on defense. Certainly, the staff wants to gain back Israel Antwine if at all possible and it may not be an easy task. Of course, there are needs on both sides of the ball and Ole Miss is still in the sights for many top recruits. They are still wanting to see us this season and that’s good.
Every high-school player who has his sights set on official visits in Oxford this fall wants to see Luke succeed. They want to see exactly what kind of head coach and staff they will be playing for should they become a Rebel. The main thing they want to see is Ole Miss win games.
Luke needs to show recruits this is the Matt Luke show now and let Ole Miss sell itself on the field this season. There is nothing which will benefit Matt Luke or Ole Miss football recruiting than winning ball games. Trust me on that.