Extra Points: Signing Day Blog

By Lee Pace

6:30 p.m.

Larry Asante as the starting strong safety for the Nebraska Cornhuskers from 2007-09 lost two bitter games to Texas, one by three points in 2007 and the second by one point in the 2009 Big 12 Championship game. Asante went on to a six-year career in the NFL and more recently has helped his younger brother Eugene negotiate the waters of the big-time football recruiting scene.

Larry accompanied Eugene, a 6-1, 210-pound linebacker from Chantilly, Va., on an official visit to Chapel Hill, and after two days of hanging around Mack Brown and the Tar Heel staff, told Brown with a grin, "I didn't like you or Texas, but now I kinda like you, and it bothers me."

Fortunately for the Tar Heels, the younger brother also liked the Carolina coaches, campus and program enough to cast his lot with Carolina on National Signing Day. Brown interrupted his mingling with a group of Tar Heel supporters in a Blue Zone Signing Day Celebration shortly after 6 p.m. to hold up his phone, tell the group that Asante was on the other end and was just about to hit SEND on a Tweet that he was coming to Chapel Hill. This was yet another signing for Brown and his staff when they lured a prospect who had committed to an ACC or national rival or was a decided lean in that direction and got them to flip.

"He's got speed, toughness, smarts, length, ability to play in space, the ability to diagnose plays really fast," linebackers coach Tommy Thigpen says.

"Reminds me of Brian Simmons," adds Tim Brewster, referring to the All-America linebacker of the Tar Heel from 1994-97.

Jay Bateman was familiar with Westfield High School, a perennial powerhouse in Northern Virginia, as Army West Point had landed four players from there in recent years. The day after he got the job at Carolina, he had Thigpen look at Asante's tape. Thigpen was on a plane the next day to visit Asante, who was a late-bloomer and didn't get his first FBS offer until early December.

"He's really talented," Bateman says. "He played only one year of linebacker in high school. He had been a running back before, so he brings that skill set to defense. His recruiting blew up in December. He could have visited 20 schools."

And so the Tar Heels' 2018-19 recruiting class was officially tied up with a celebratory bow.

"Often in a transition year, you pretty much sacrifice the recruiting class," Brown says. "Not this class. I think we got some really good players who'll help us win some games. And next year will be much better."

3:45 p.m.

Brown holds a press conference at 3 p.m. to talk about the four signees officially committed for the day and evaluate the overall body of work including the 19 signed in December. He tells the reporters there is one more player out there and they won't know his status until later. Looking at the entirety of the class, the Tar Heels have five defensive linemen, four offensive linemen, receivers and defensive backs each, two specialists and one each at quarterback, running back, tight end and linebacker.

"We have 10 from the state of North Carolina, and that number will go up significantly one year from now," Brown said. "We want kids to stay in their state. It's where they were raised, where their families are, where their coaches are. Our message is to stay at home and play in your home state. Then we'll look for great players out of state. We're not going to take average players from out of state. If you're come here from out of state, you're going to be great.

"That was a formula that worked for us the first time here and will again now."

Brown shows video clips of each of Wednesday's commitments. He likes cornerback Don Chapman's instincts, intelligence and ability to run the field and hit people. He cites defensive end Ray Vohasek's passion, quickness and hard-hitting ability. Brown smiles showing repeated clips of center Ty Murray pancaking opponents. And he marvels at how fast Wisdom Asaboro runs at a height of 6-8.

"We signed a better class than I would have ever dreamed," Brown says. "Evaluation is the key. It's not just ratings and ability. You've got to evaluate the right ones that fit your place. It's all about the evaluation of people who fit your place. Our place is different, it's unique. I feel like we've done that."

1:40 p.m.

Two points of need for Carolina's 2019 football team were addressed with signees on Wednesday—defensive end and cornerback.

The Tar Heels lose four senior defensive linemen off last year's team, so adding an end in Ray Vohasak who has the physical attributes and maturity to challenge for immediate playing time was important. Vohasek is a 6-3, 280-pound end from suburban Chicago who played junior college football at the College of Dupage. He was recruited by the previous staff and in fact made an official visit the weekend of the season finale against N.C. State. NCAA rules allow a player to make a second visit to a school if there is a head coaching change, so Vohasek traveled to Chapel Hill again in January to visit Mack Brown, defensive line coach Tim Cross and co-defensive coordinator Jay Bateman.

"Ray was important to this class," Bateman says. "We got here and started studying the depth chart, there seemed to be a bit of a gap between the older D-line guys who are really good and the younger ones who've not played much. Ray is a tough, physical kid who should be ready to play. We were able to kind of skip a year with him given the development he's already had. We were fortunate we were able to get him."

"I love his motor," Cross adds. "He's tough and a little bit older, so hopefully he can be ready sooner than most incoming guys. He's a hard-nosed kid. I like what I see with him."

After the December NSD, Bateman and Tim Brewster sat down with a list of all the cornerbacks in the country with FBS offers who had not signed. There were 92 of them. In winnowing the list, Bateman recognized a player from San Diego who he'd offered earlier while on the staff at Army West Point—Don Chapman.

"We were first to offer him, but we got thrown quickly by the wayside, he got popular pretty fast," Bateman says. "All the schools on the West Coast were interested in him. I reached out to his coach and to Don. He had a really good senior year, was two-time captain, great grades. He was everything you want.

"I think at first he came out here just to see what North Carolina is like, thinking, 'Coach Bateman and Coach Dré are pretty good guys, I'll give it a look.' But things clicked. We are really fortunate to get him. A lot of people wanted him at the end. He has a big body and is a very talented kid. He could become a safety, but I think he has corner skills. Those are pretty hard to find."

11:45 a.m.

Tim Brewster was coaching at the University of Texas 20 years ago when he was recruiting at Thomas Jefferson High in Denver. He met the head coach there, Tim Cross, and was immediately impressed.

"He was holed up in a broom closet for an office, but he was the most upbeat, passionate guy I'd ever met," Brewster says. "He had an amazing impact on me. I just knew special things were in store for this guy. We became very close friends."

Brewster opened the door with Mack Brown to get on the Longhorn staff as an assistant strength and conditioning coach, and Brewster knew if he ever got a head coaching job, Cross would be on his list of potential staff candidates.

"When I was hired at the University of Minnesota, Tim was the first guy I called," Brewster says. "There was an authentic quality to him I'd not seen before. And he was an outstanding defensive line coach, a technician in every sense of the word."

Cross was coaching at the Air Force Academy in 2018 when Brown called and asked if he'd be interested in moving to Chapel Hill. Cross didn't give it a second thought to reunite with Brown and Brewster.

That's the backdrop to the emotional address Cross gave to the full Tar Heel squad when Brown introduced his staff at a team meeting at the beginning of the spring semester. The video and Cross's appeal to "Let's get this work" went viral.

Cross chuckles when asked about the meeting. It was not, he says, planned.

"I didn't know it was getting filmed, to tell you the truth," he said. "I can be emotional at times. Things that are choreographed or scripted don't last, they're not real. If I speak, I like to speak off cuff, from the heart, and be sincere."

The mantra he repeated to first one player and then another, clasping hands and bumping chests, is one he's developed over the years.

"It's a mindset kind of thing," he says. "If you want something, don't hesitate, get this work. If you have goals you want to reach, get this work. At the same time, if trouble comes your way, adversity, you can't sit back on your haunches, get this work. If there is anything you try to take from me, in a family sense, on the field in Kenan Stadium, whatever, you're going to have to come get this work.

"That's kind of the mindset behind it. It just sort of happened. I doubt I'm the first person to ever say those exact words, but they stuck with me. It's kind of my thing."

And it was vintage Tim Cross.

"He's an amazingly passionate guy," Brewster says. "He's worked extremely hard in his life to get to where he's at. I think at that moment the emotions took hold of him, and he wanted to genuinely share how he felt about joining this program, about this opportunity. The emotion of it got him fired up. That's who he is. He's a passionate, emotional human being."

10 a.m.

Two of Carolina's signees on Wednesday illustrate the vagaries of the recruiting business and the underlying importance of contacts and relationships.

With Murray, an offensive lineman from Carrollton, Ga., the Tar Heels had the relationships.

And with Asaboro, the Tar Heels had the contacts that alerted them in October to this raw athletic talent that was not yet on the recruiting radar.

Lonnie Galloway had been receivers coach at Louisville in 2018 until head coach Bobby Petrino was fired. Last spring he found a tough and versatile offensive lineman in Carrollton, Ga., recruited him hard and got a verbal commitment to Louisville last October.

"I fell in love with him and his family," says Galloway, now the Tar Heels' receivers coach. "He's a good kid. He played guard, center and tackle. He was pitcher and third baseman on the baseball team."

He pauses and smiles.

"They say he stole 10 bases, but I haven't seen that," Galloway says, the vision of a 6-2, 300-pounder streaking the base path a bit hard to grasp. "But I'll have to catch him this spring."

Carrollton High coach Sean Calhoun loves Murray's work ethic, ability to play through injury and well-rounded personality that allows him to be a good student in the classroom but be a bit ornery on the field.

"With an offensive lineman, you want a kid with a little edge who'll go right to the echo of the whistle," Calhoun says. "He wants to dominate and bury you and pancake you. He takes a lot of pride in that. And he's a smart kid—above a 3.0 average. I would not be surprised if in this time at North Carolina he's All-ACC and All-ACC Academic Honor Roll.

"Coach Galloway developed a great relationship with Ty and his family. He said late in the season, 'I don't know where I'll be next year, but wherever it is, I'm coming back after Ty.'"

Adds Galloway: "When I got the job here, he was the top of my list. I had to get that kid for Carolina."

Meanwhile, the Tar Heels started on Asaboro in mid-October when John Mark Hamilton, the program's director of player personnel, got a text from a contact in Charlotte showing a 6-8 kid who had immigrated from Nigeria after traveling to the States on a basketball team. He was at Covenant Day School in Matthews and planned to graduate from high school in 2020, and his family back home, high school coaches and host family had him on a schedule to graduate from high school in 2020.

Tommy Thigpen was the one holdover from the previous staff who remained with Brown who recruited Charlotte. He did some legwork in October, began developing the relationship and took Brown and other Tar Heel defensive coaches to Matthews in December. Carolina had a head start before a half dozen other schools from the ACC, SEC and Big Ten began recruiting Asaboro hard.

"Then we studied his grades and saw he could come out in the class of 2019," Thigpen says. "We said, why wait? With Wisdom, you have a combination of speed and length you don't find very often and that you cannot coach. And he's got a huge care factor. We'll bring him in, take our time and let him learn a position. He's got huge upside."

9:15 a.m.

Dré Bly is the newbie in the group, this first-year college coach hanging out with veterans like Mack Brown, Tim Brewster and Phil Longo on the fourth floor of Kenan Football Center as dawn beckons on National Signing Day. They're all working their phones with text messages, checking their Twitter feeds and receiving calls from prospective Tar Heel football players.

Brown and his new coaching staff will wrap up their first recruiting class over the course of day, adding to the 19 who signed in December.

"Dré's the only one here who's never lost on signing day," Brown says with a smile. "He's unbeaten. You just wait."

"I don't lose, Coach, I don't know what that means," answers Bly, the former All-America cornerback for the Tar Heels from 1996-98 who joined Brown's staff in December in his first official, full-time college coaching job.

Brown and Brewster ruminate for a moment on players they've lost at the 11th hour over three-decade-plus coaching careers, Brewster remembering the drama of a safety from Pennsylvania taking forever to opt for the Tar Heels over Penn State on NSD 1993. Finally Omar Brown did in fact sign with the Tar Heels and played a key role in the Tar Heels ascending to a 21-3 run over 1996-97.

"Dré's never lost a prospect who told you the night before at 1 o'clock he's coming, and you get up the next morning and he's going somewhere else," Brown says. "We've all lost them. That's why we sit around squirming and anxious and nervous on signing day. It happens."

That said, Brown expects a relatively drama free day on Wednesday. The first dominoes fell around 9 a.m. with scholarship papers being texted in from Ty Murray, an offensive lineman from Carrollton, Ga., Wisdom Asaboro, a defensive lineman from Nigeria by way of Charlotte, and Raymond Vohasek, a junior college defensive lineman from Illinois.

"This will be an unbelievable class from where we started to where we are today," Brown says of taking the Tar Heel job in late November. "Our coaches worked so hard day and night to have a class that will help us get better. It's a real good class, and we're already way ahead on next year's, and that will be a great class."

Bly marvels that one national recruiting service ranked the Tar Heels' impending class at 91st when the new staff got started and that the same service pegged it at 31st best with the new signees anticipated on Wednesday.

"It's been eye-opening following Coach Brown around the two months," Bly says. "He has more intensity and energy than he had 20 years ago. He's fired up, he hasn't missed a beat. This is a high-energy, high-confidence staff. The schools I've been in, I tell them this is my first coaching gig, but no one will outwork me. And there's nothing better than having someone with experience going in and telling their story. First hand, I can tell these kids what being a Tar Heel has done for me."

By the end of the day today, there should be around 25 new Tar Heels officially part of the 2018-19 class. A handful enrolled in January, others arrive for summer school.

"After today," Brown says, "we finally get to do some coaching."

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