It's Mother's Day, but we all got a present this weekend. Two actually, as Penn State has landed verbal commitments from two highly recruited defensive backs.
Penn State's football program received verbal commitments from a pair of highly rated defensive backs over the weekend.
New York's Stephen Obeng-Agyapong and Maryland's Darrell Givens are now onboard, increasing the Nittany Lions' commitments to five.
Givens had originally committed to Ohio State less than a month ago. He is one of the most highly recruited pure cornerbacks in the country holding offers from Florida, Illinois, Miami, North Carolina, Pitt, Maryland, Rutgers, Virginia, Tennessee, and Boston College.
Givens rushed into a commitment to the Buckeyes after an unofficial visit. His teammate Malcolm Willis committed to Penn State a few weeks later. Could that have come into play? Maybe, but I think Givens was more impressed with our favorable depth chart that will give him the opportunity to play early at Penn State. I'm sure that certain people who swear there is no gentleman's agreement between Big Ten coaches will claim that we just violated it. Whatever. It's pretty obvious since Rodriguez joined the conference that anything goes, so when in Rome...
I can't say I'm too surprised that Obeng-Agyapong picked Penn State. He hails from John Kennedy High School in the Bronx which also produced current Penn State players Stephfon Green, Shaine Thompson, and Nerraw McCormack. He has a somewhat more modest offer list that just included Iowa, Connecticut, and Buffalo, but then the other three kids from JFK didn't get much attention either. Green was a two star recruit that was the media darling of spring practice this year. McCormack ended up at Penn State via the junior college route and Thompson was a walk-on. New York City just isn't considered much of a recruiting hotbed, so kids from that area don't tend to get a lot of attention.
I anticipated six defensive backs in this class: three safeties and three cornerbacks. The count now stands at two safeties and one corner. We're still pursuing some big targets like Corey Brown, Jordan Love, Stephon Morris, Nyshier Oliver, Gerald Hodges, and Abdul Smith. Overall I think we're in good shape for secondary recruiting. Now if we could just get a quarterback and some wide receivers...