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Two Thoughts on Freshmen Giving Verbals

Editor’s Note: Please welcome Peter Tumbas back to LAS! PT has been all over the place this year and has checked out a ton of events, many of them with a recruiting twist. Today he gives his two cents on early recruiting for college, specifically focused on Freshman making verbal commitments to D1 programs.

Two Thoughts on Freshmen Giving Verbals

1) LSU football accepted a verbal from a 9th grader recently. SEC football is kind of a big deal. If early commits make sense for D1 football, why wouldn’t it make sense for a lacrosse team? I’ve yet to hear a truly compelling argument for why this doesn’t hold true. Why can’t a 2017 commit to play lacrosse at UNC like David Piazza just did?

2) What’s the worst that can happen for these kids? They are teased a little bit by their older teammates who haven’t committed yet. They are teased when they don’t score on a 1v1 with a goalie. They might be targeted a little bit sooner by the opposition. If they hold up their end of the bargain academically and don’t get in trouble with the law, they’re going to the school they verbally committed to as freshmen. Wouldn’t you trade a little bit of heckling to be a D1 commit?

Of course, these freshmen could always change their mind in a year or three. It’s a non-binding agreement, after all.

What will be truly interesting about the lacrosse recruiting realm will be how long the current gentlemen’s agreement amongst coaches remains intact. Did you read that LSU article closely?

Saban — and every other head coach in the country — now has four whole years to persuade Moses not to stay home for his college career.

When D1 lacrosse coaches start disregarding verbal commits to other schools and continue to recruit kids until their name is signed in goat’s blood on a NLI, that’s when things will get super interesting. Perhaps that will also be the same time that college lacrosse becomes as big of a business as collegiate hoops and football.

D1 coaches are discussing early recruiting this week and weekend around the IMLCA Convention, so more news is sure to surface in the coming week on where lacrosse stands with this issue. Then the question becomes, can NCAA lacrosse coaches do anything about it? The NCAA creates the rules, and without a push from basketball and football coaches, it seems unlikely that much will change when it comes to early recruiting. However, with the IMLCA now getting into recruiting events, there could be a more concentrated push, so maybe we will see something come out of all this after all.

Stay tuned for more…