Getting to Know our New Recruits: DT Adam Gotsis

Prior stories in this series: ATH (QB) Dennis Andrews, ATH (QB) Justin Thomas, WR Michael Summers, ATH (RB) Marcus Allen, DE Francis Kallon, and WR Travin Henry.

So apparently they play American football as far away as Australia -- who knew? I'll tell you exactly who knew: Paul Johnson, who in his time coaching at Hawaii (1987-1994, along with Mike Sewak) created a bond with one of his players, Paul Manera, who went on to coach an Australian "gridiron" team and, in 2011, recognize some true talent in one of his players, Adam Gotsis, and recommend Gotsis to Johnson as a potentially outrageous DT who would be great for the Georgia Tech football team. You getting all this? Better make sure, there's a quiz at the end.

Gotsis was kept a secret by our coaches until he visited, as they didn't want other programs catching wind of him and approaching him. We got his commitment, and then some other schools approached him, but he told them he was set on coming to Georgia Tech. Reportedly has a great family who loved their visit to the Institute as well.

Anyways, this is another potential "diamond in the rough" for Georgia Tech's signing class. Gotsis was given two pity stars by Rivals (being recruited by a BCS level program is worth something, I suppose was the thinking), but he very well could end up being the most dominant two-star recruit out of this year's signing class. He stands at 6'5" and weighs in at 295lb, which is pretty lean for his frame. It really makes me think of him as having "farm boy" strength, just being very thick and having solid strength with every part of his body. He seems like he's got a ton of room to add more muscle weight in his time here as well. Long story short, he has potential to be the ideally-sized, big-impact DT for our program. He may require a redshirt to make sure he's in line with what we're trying to do (plus, TJ Barnes is a 5th-year Senior and Shawn Green is a redshirt sophomore now, so we don't necessarily need his contributions immediately), but hopefully he can provide a lot of what we're looking for (and have yet to find) from our DTs. Welcome to America, Adam, and more importantly, welcome to Georgia Tech!

I couldn't find a solid highlight video for him, so I suppose you'll just have to take my word for it that he's a good ballplayer.