Technical Tidbits 7/14

With baseball in its pre-All Star break lull and the USMNT long out of the World Cup, it’s been a slow couple of weeks in the sports world. But, the NCAA-instated "dead period" for recruiting is over at last, and it appears that the GT Football recruiting staff aren’t wasting any time getting back to work. 2015 DB recruit Dante Wigley, said to be one of the top prospects on Tech’s board, will be on campus bright and early this morning for an official visit. The Carrollton native (6-1, 180 lbs) has good size for a cornerback and would be an excellent addition to an already strong recruiting class. With Roof’s new 4-2-5 defense set to be installed and on the field this fall, having a stable of talented, hard-hitting defensive backs will be of paramount importance. Wigley’s commitment would be a great compliment to the wealth of talent that was brought in to the secondary last year in the form of Step Durham, the Austin twins, and Shaun Kagawa.

Anyone miss Daniel Miller yet? I sure do. The good news is that Miller had his first taste of NBA competition on Saturday playing on the Washington Wizards summer team. He only saw 13 minutes of action, but managed to nab four rebounds and add a single point. Funny enough, Miller is playing alongside former Tech PG Glen Rice, Jr., who was kicked off the team in early 2012 by Brian Gregory following an incident that may or may not have involved firing a handgun from the backseat of a moving car. Rice, Jr. is doing pretty well for himself these days it seems, as he posted 22 points on Saturday.

Incoming freshman OL Gary Brown can deadlift 605 pounds, which is impressive and also exciting considering the GT strength and conditioning staff haven’t even gotten their hands on him yet. For those of you who don’t know, a deadlift is essentially lifting a barbell/weight up from the ground to your waist and back down again (similar to grabbing all the grocery bags out of your trunk at once so that you only have to make one trip in to the house). Now 605 pounds is a weight that’s hard to quantify to the every day guy, so, rolling with the grocery analogy here, Gary could carry over 70 gallons of milk in from the driveway in a single trip, assuming the grocery bags are of negligible weight. That’s one strong dude. Hopefully his enormous strength will translate to the football field well and he has a successful career protecting our current and future quarterbacks.

Those of you in the Atlanta area are in for a real treat. The College Football Hall of Fame, minutes away from Tech’s campus, will be opening Saturday August 23^rd, a few days ahead of schedule (which could very well be the first time in history that a construction project in Atlanta was completed early – or on time). Surely by late August you will all be chomping at the bit for college football, so dropping by might help hold you over for that one last week. Plus it’s right next to Centennial Park and Taco Mac – there, I planned that entire Saturday for you! Either way, the HOF is definitely worth checking out.

Will Roof and company begin targeting bigger DBs to augment the 4-2-5 defense?