4-Star Athlete Mike Hughes of New Bern blindsided many NC State fans and coaches and selected UNC-CHeats this morning at a ceremony at New Bern High School. Hughes says he will be enrolling early and the highly recruited athlete had offers from UNC, Auburn, Clemson, Florida, Ole Miss, Ohio St, South Carolina, Tenn. Va, Tech among others. In the end it came down to NC State, Florida and UNC and conventional wisdom had UNC at a distant third.
Hughes measures 5’11”, 180 lbs and clocked 4.3s 40 yard dash and his high school production represents those measurables well. While playing QB for New Bern, Hughes passed for 1,404 yards & 11 TDs. He also ran for 1,639 yards and 26 more scores this year but will likely be a cornerback in college although I wouldn’t be surprised to see him all over the field.
I’d like to quickly throw out the idea that we should immediately take the scholarship we had for Hughes and go recruit this guy IMMEDIATELY!!! The greatest recruiting tape of ALL TIME!!
I found Hughes’ public comments after his visit to UNC to be very strange. He talked about things that were important to him, and very little of what he said seemed to sync with the reality of what is UNC Football. But, in the end, it may be the fact that UNC’s defense is so bad that tilted him to take the risk of attending a school whose coach appears to float his name for every job possible each year and is in the middle of tremendous risk of being hammered by the NCAA.
Hughes recently said early playing time would be a big factor. Given UNCs defense, that makes a lot of sense.
— Pack Pride (@PackPride) December 22, 2014
If that kid watched our game this year and came away wanting to be a part of THAT train wreck,then we never had a chance anyway GL to him
— david riddle (@stickwolf) December 22, 2014
A little personal story. I had a buddy go watch the 4a State Title game. He follows college football but doesn’t follow any recruiting. As soon as the game was over he called to tell me about this QB from New Bern and he raved about how good of an athlete he was. “He was clearly the best player on the field and I knew you’d know about him.” That’s what kind of an athlete Hughes is. He’s a special kind of player. Oh yea, he led his team to victory and was the game MVP.
UNC was believed to have the last in-home visit with Hughes before the title game and upcoming dead-period but the Wolfpack coaches were one step ahead and had rare breakfast in-home with the Hughes family. Coaches Barlow, Kitchings and Doeren all showed up for the visit. As we mentioned in the Nyheim Hines update, it is rare for a head coach to make these in-homes but that is 2 in two days for Coach Doeren.
It is believe that Larry Fedora’s in-home visit lasted three hours and may have not even mentioned the departure of UNC’s defensive co-ordinator, Vic Koening. I guess that is not much of a surprise being that the UNC coaches didn’t respect their own current players to personally tell them, either (link).
So he chooses a school that the head coach didn't even mention they fired their DC, and still has no DC. Interesting.
— Drew Johnson (@d_johnson13) December 22, 2014
@ReevesiXi They have no DC also. So he is basically committing blindly. What a boneheaded move. It wouldn't surprise me to se him decommit.
— Nathan Miller (@nathan_t_miller) December 22, 2014
My only comment at this stage is…
When UNC goes on probation AGAIN, can we PLEASE stop talking about punishing innocent kids? They KNOW the risk they are taking.
— statefansnation (@statefansnation) December 22, 2014
