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Congratulations, reader. You've nearly made it to the finish line of the 2016 recruiting year. It's been an interesting one to follow, to say the least, but on Wednesday, the drama will finally come to a close. As of Monday, Penn State currently has the No. 16 ranked class in the country, but has the opportunity to rise up those rankings, as the rest of their class commits over the course of the early part of this week. The currently verbally committed class is as follows:
Name | Position | Star Rating | High School | Height/Weight |
---|---|---|---|---|
Connor McGovern* | C |
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Lake-Lehman (Pa.) | 6'5"/310 |
Jake Zembiec* | Pro-QB |
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Aquinas Institute (Ny.) | 6'3"/205 |
Danny Dalton* | TE |
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Marshfield (Ma.) | 6'4"/240 |
Alex Gellerstedt* | OT |
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Dublin Coffman (Oh.) | 6'6"/275 |
Miles Sanders | RB |
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Woodland Hills (Pa.) | 5'11"/199 |
Michal Menet | OG |
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Exeter Township (Pa.) | 6'5"/273 |
Shane Simmons | WDE |
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DeMatha Catholic (Md.) | 6'4"/221 |
Ellison Jordan | DT |
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Gilman (Md.) | 6'0"/270 |
Daniel Joseph | SDE |
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Lake Forest Academy (Il.) | 6'3"/240 |
Andrew Pryts | S |
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Hickory (Pa.) | 6'1"/199 |
Cameron Brown | OLB |
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Paint Branch (Md.) | 6'5"/210 |
Zechariah McPhearson | CB |
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Riverdale Baptist School (Md.) | 5'11"/183 |
Aaron Mathews | ATH |
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Clairton (Pa.) | 6'5"/190 |
Will Fries | OT |
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Cranford (Nj.) | 6'7"/285 |
Shaka Toney | WDE |
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Imhotep Institute (Pa.) | 6'3"/210 |
Blake Gillikin | P |
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Westminster School (Ga.) | 6'1"/180 |
Antonio Shelton | DT |
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Westerville North (Oh.) | 6'3"/280 |
Alex Barbir | K |
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South Forsyth (Ga.) | 5'10"/195 |
Dae'lun Darien | WR |
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Dunbar (Md.) | 6'4"/205 |
*-denotes early enrollee
The class currently holds commitments from 18 players, which means there's room for more to join the fold before the letters of intent roll in. The main names that Penn State fans should be paying attention to are ILB Brendan Ferns, CB Damar Hamlin, WR Dredrick Snelson, WR Dae'lun Darien, CB Lavert Hill and DT Rashad Weaver. Black Shoe Diaries will be here updating you on their statuses throughout the week.
In case you missed it, we profiled all of the early enrollees last week (McGovern, Zembiec, Gellerstedt, Dalton), and will continue using that style of post to profile all of Penn State's commits on National Signing Day itself. Similar to last year, we will use a draft board that will serve as the main hub to keep track of which recruits' letters of intent arrive, and when. When their names officially go up on Penn State's draft board, they'll go up on ours as well. All one needs to do is click the card, and it will send you to their individual profile.
Aside from the profiles, we'll have a few other things running on National Signing Day, including a rundown of how the 2016 class came together, full redshirt predictions, as well as some superlatives for the new Penn State Nittany Lions. Make sure to keep an eye on Black Shoe Diaries all day as the articles roll in.
I'd like to say a quick thank you to all of you that have followed along with our coverage of Penn State recruiting on Black Shoe Diaries this year. We changed how did things a bit, focusing less on Recruiting Roundups (because frankly, they take a lot of time to write) and moved to the Committany Nation format, which allowed us to give quicker updates on things happening in the Penn State recruiting world. Please leave us your feedback on that, we'd love to hear it.
Also, shoutout to Matt de Bear, Bill DiFillippo and Noel Purcell who joined the recruiting team in a more permanent way. Having them around to help out made it much easier to make sure that there was consistent coverage all year long. So please thank those guys in the comments, they deserve it.
If you have any questions about anything National Signing Day-related, feel free to tweet them at me or at the BSD account, or comment on any of this week's NSD-related posts. Thanks for reading.