UGA signed more junior college players for 2013 than the last four recruiting classes combined.
Toby Johnson, a 4-star defensive tackle from Hutchinson junior college, was the latest addition to UGA, becoming the fifth JC player to sign with the Bulldogs for 2013. In the previous four seasons, UGA had a total of four JC signees.
Mark Richt seems really happy about Johnson, who picked the Bulldogs over Auburn and Mississippi State on Tuesday:
“A lot of people may remember or may not remember, but a lot of people had him ranked as the No. 1 junior college player in the country,” Richt told the AJC. “The ACL injury is one that almost everyone recovers from very well. There are some times when it’s not 100 percent. But we’re very confident that he’ll come back healthy and be the player he has been and maybe beyond, with our training, our nutrition and our coaching.
“We hope all those things together will help (Johnson) continue to progress and become a great player. We certainly have a need in that area (defensive tackle), so I think it was a good fit for him and for us.”
Will JC players become a trend for UGA? They certainly needed to instant influx of veteran recruits for the upcoming season after having the defense almost entirely wiped out by graduation and early NFL departures.
“A lot of times it is a need-basis issue,” Richt said. “If you need a mature player at a position, then you will do it.
“If you remember, we had some guys from the ‘Dream Team’ class that, you know, some DBs that ended up not being with us anymore. So those are guys that would've been ready to step into the role (as a starter next year with) a little bit more maturity. Since we had a void in that area, we wanted to make sure we brought in some guys that were a little bit older and a little bit more mature in their ability to play the game. But the other thing we knew is that we were going to try to sign a very large class. And the goal was to break up the class. We didn’t want every single guy to be a freshman. We wanted to break it up a little bit, where it we’d have enough junior college guys that would be two years old older than the other guys in the class.
“The other thing that really came out really well for us was the midyear enrollees. Having 13 come in (and enroll in January) was tremendous for us. All of those guys seem to be doing extremely well. And that broke up our big class as well. We have 13 guys now, and we're indoctrinating them the Georgia way academically and physically -- and they're getting a head start on football, of course.
“So now that rest of the class is going to be closer to 20, instead of 32 or 33 rolling in all at one time. We've got it broken up because of the number of midyear players, which I think is working out very well for us so far.”
UGA's other JC signees are DB Shaquille Fluker, DT Chris Mayes, WR Jonathon Rumph and DB Kennar Johnson.
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