With just 13 seniors departing, only two of whom started, Dennis Erickson knew his 2011 recruiting class would be small.
On Wednesday, the ASU football team received 11 National Letters of Intent, not including two signees who enrolled in January and one 2009 signee.
“The situation with us this year was that we just didn’t have a lot of scholarships,” Erickson said. “But I’m happy with the guys we got. We filled areas that we wanted to, not totally, but we accomplished what we felt we needed to accomplish.”
Among the new Sun Devils are two highly-touted California quarterbacks: Michael Eubank and Mike Bercovici, who graduated high school early and will participate in spring drills.
Eubank was rated as the No. 8 dual-threat quarterback by Rivals while Bercovici came in at No. 14 on the pro-style list.
“The teams that compete and win championships have someone very, very good at that position,” Erickson said. “I don’t know that there is a team in the country that signed two quarterbacks as good as we did. To me, one quarterback might be worth two or three recruits depending on how good they are.”
The class of 14 includes five Arizona natives.
Gilbert Perry High School’s Mo Latu headlined the list as the No. 2 center in the nation.
The Sun Devils signed seven from California and one from both Florida and Colorado.
“Right now we’re at about 83 scholarships, so we do have a couple left,” Erickson said. “There are a few guys we’re looking at out there.”
Unfortunately, ASU failed to keep most of the state’s top ranked players from going elsewhere.
Chandler Hamilton’s Christian Westerman committed to Auburn, Scottsdale Saguaro’s Cyrus Hobbi chose USC and Tempe Corona Del Sol’s Todd Peat Jr. picked Nebraska, just to name a few.
“This state is our number one goal,” Erickson said. “We got five today but four or five or six of them that we wanted got away; and each one for a lot of different reasons. I know when we start winning and get people in the stands, some of that will change. And we’re to that point now.
“We recruited those kids extremely hard, a lot of them since they were sophomores in high school. The effort to keep those guys has been unbelievable.”
ASU has 19 starters returning in 2011.
“Some guys looked at our depth chart and saw we have a lot of guys coming back and said, ‘I can’t play as a true freshman so I’m not coming,’ and I think that’s fine,” Erickson said.
The coach pointed out that recruiting is not about finding the highest-rated guys, but the ones that fit the team’s system the best.
“It’s all about evaluating and development,” Erickson said. “You have to find the guys that fit in with what you want to do. I love the guys in our locker room right now and they weren’t the most highly recruited group in the world and now we have a chance to be pretty good next year.”
Spring practice begins March 22.
Reach the reporter at tyler.emerick@asu.edu
