the recruit: Maurice Canady

Name: Maurice Canady
Position: WR/DB
Hometown: Richmond
School: Varina
Height: 6’1″
Weight: 165

24/7: NR
ESPN: 74; two stars; #136 WR
Rivals: 5.4; two stars
Scout: two stars

Other offers: East Carolina, various I-AA

You wouldn’t believe how many other Maurice Canadys exist in this world.  I mean, it’s not like this kid is named John Smith.  I had literally never heard of the surname “Canady” before this kid showed up at camp and committed, and yet there are loads of them out there, many of them named Maurice.  It does kind of roll off the tongue.

Anyway.  Camp.  This particular Maurice Canady went there, the UVA camp, performed very well, earned an offer, and his response was to commit.  That’s the full story of his recruitment from the UVA side.  For Canady it started at the end of May when I-AA offers started coming in; ECU followed at the beginning of June, but less than a week later, Canady was committed to his “dream school.”

In high school, Canady’s best position is wide receiver – that’s where his coach offers the most praise for his abilities – but midway through last season his high school coach inserted him at quarterback, and he responded by running for almost 200 muddy yards.  So he’s been a quarterback ever since, and he’ll be one when he starts this season.  That won’t be permanent, though; his passing skills are rudimentary, and at camp, he performed at receiver and defensive back.

Which is where he’ll end up at UVA.  Receiver.  Or maybe defensive back.  Canady is one of those guys (I get this impression, at least) that the coaches offered not because they saw him filling a specific role, but because they like his athleticism and figure he can go where he’s needed later on.  Schools always bring these guys in; I think Mike London does it somewhat more often than Al Groh ever did.  What it means is there’s just no sense projecting Canady’s future beyond his first couple years on the team, which he’ll spend redshirting and apprenticing and generally buried on the depth chart.

Canady has a consensus rating as a very borderline prospect.  ESPN gives him a really nice looking scouting report and then finishes it up by calling him a “non-BCS-caliber prospect,” so I dunno what I’m supposed to think about that.  He’s really skinny, which doesn’t help.  In order to contribute in college in any kind of meaningful way – even on kick coverage – he needs at least 15-20 pounds, and he needs to add that without losing the speed that made him attractive to the coaches in the first place.  Canady will join the team next fall probably without any kind of well-defined role, and we’ll really have to wait two or three years to find out where he makes his impact.

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A couple recruiting things: as you almost certainly know, Eli Harold made it official last night and became the latest member of the recruiting class.  That makes three bona fide stars in this class, all in the front seven on defense.  This class doesn’t have the top-to-bottom cachet of last year’s but it’s a nice complement to it; all the real star power was at skill positions in 2011.  This year, the star power is in the land of the dirty work.

Also, one more name will come off the board one way or another on Friday, with Trey Edmunds’s announcement.  I like Edmunds because he’s managed to conduct his recruitment in such a way that nobody thinks they’re going to get him, which is a 180 from the usual way of things.  If UVA can add Edmunds to this class with Kwontie Moore and Mark Hall it’ll be the best linebacker haul since 2007, or since 2002 if you decide to penalize ’07 for J’Courtney Williams’s penchant for credit card thievery.

At From Old Virginia you will find impassioned, monumentally biased coverage of ‘Hoos football in the fall, basketball in the winter, baseball and lacrosse in the spring, and everything else when the mood strikes me.

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