Football Welcomes Signees

By: Zac Boyer

Posted: 1/22/07

Randy Edsall was taking part in the local tradition in the town square of his hometown of Glen Rock, Pa. on Christmas Eve when his cell phone rang 10 minutes before midnight.

It was Jarrell Miller, a four-star linebacker who committed to the Huskies earlier in December and became UConn's highest-ranked football recruit ever.

"I'm saying, 'Uh-oh, this can't be good,'" Edsall said.

Miller, who committed to North Carolina last season before leaving and was rumored to have verbally committed to Virginia at one point, wasn't about to ruin the coach's holiday - he was just calling to wish Edsall a Merry Christmas.

"I said, 'Well, thank you,' and told him I was down in my hometown and he was probably thinking he was going to get an answering machine, but he didn't," Edsall said. "He got the real live voice."

It was in that generous mood that Edsall held a press conference Friday afternoon to introduce the football team's four newest players - Miller, junior college quarterback Tyler Lorenzen, safety Aaron Bagsby and linebacker Corey Stringer. The four players will be eligible for spring practice as a result of enrolling early, and all but Lorenzen, who will have two years of eligibility remaining, will be given until December 2011 to finish their four years of school and take a fifth year to redshirt, if necessary.

The head coach and the players discussed their strengths, reasons for committing and what they hoped to accomplish during their time in Storrs for just over an hour, but it was Lorenzen who spelled out his reason for coming to UConn.

"I came here to play, but I also came here to win, and that's what matters," Lorenzen said.

The quarterback, who idolized Brett Favre while growing up, joins the Huskies from Palomar Community College in San Marcos, Calif., where he threw for 2,960 yards and 26 touchdowns against only 3 interceptions. After originally signing with Iowa State, Lorenzen was converted to a receiver and never saw action on the field, leading to his transfer from the program and eventually to UConn, where he will join the mix this spring in the hunt for the starting quarterback position.

Edsall said it was Lorenzen's accuracy as a quarterback, his knowledge of the game and his toughness that led to the offer to join the Huskies.

"The quarterback position is so important, and I think you see that regardless of whatever level you're at," Edsall said. "There's more than just the physical attributes of playing the position - it's the other things that separate those average quarterbacks and the great quarterbacks is the intangibles involved."

Miller, who currently stands at 270 pounds, joins the Huskies after a semester at Fork Union (Va.) Military Academy. He was named a Parade All-American in 2005 after an outstanding senior year at Highland Springs High School in Virginia and participated in the U.S. Army All-American Bowl in 2006, where he was named the East team's most valuable player.

The linebacker said he has been running often in order to move closer to the 250-pound threshold the coaching staff would like him to be at. Despite his size, Edsall has no plans to move Miller to defensive end and added that he can stay at 270 pounds if he's able to do what is asked of him on and off the field.

"With his size and things, he's physical - he plays physical and he likes to play the game, and those are the things that we like out of him," Edsall said.

Miller's interest in the Huskies originally began when UConn defensive coordinator Todd Orlando and defensive line coach Hank Hughes were sitting in the athletic offices at Fork Union waiting to meet with another player.

"I really didn't know anything about UConn at all besides the basketball team," Miller said. "I've seen them on TV and things like that. It was just like, I walked in the office to talk to coach Burton, one of the coaches at Fork Union, and they were just sitting over there. But as soon as I walked in, they started talking to me, and I started talking to them, and then they started talking to me about official visits and everything and I got real interested."

Bagsby, a 6-foot-1, 171-pound safety from Henderson, Nev. who describes himself as "smart with agility," committed to the Huskies after looking at the facilities and being impressed with the weight room. He spent a semester at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pa. in order to adapt to living on the east coast. The coaching staff was originally interested in Bagsby late last year, but the safety held off on committing to UConn until this season because he had recently made a promise to attend The Hill School.

The hardest part of the whole recruiting process, according to Bagsby, was getting his name out to coaches because Nevada in general is not known for high school athletics.

"Actually, it's really, really hard to get noticed," Bagsby said, "especially in football because a lot of coaches don't like to recruit the west and especially in Nevada. But I feel that once you get yourself on the map, it shouldn't be a hard task to get out of Nevada and go to a good college."

Edsall said he was especially impressed with Bagsby because he played most of the season with a broken right thumb, but continued to play.

Stringer, the fourth player in the spring class, originally signed a letter of intent in February 2006, but tore the ACL in his right knee while practicing shortly beforehand.

"What we told him was that we were still going to honor the scholarship, but we were going to want to bring him in in January as opposed to bringing him in in August because he wasn't going to be able to compete in August," Edsall said.

He continued to rehab the knee and planned to enroll somewhere else to take classes and be a full-time student, but instead stayed at Fork Union because he would then be considered a transfer student should he move to UConn.

"By not coming in until January, now he's got the ability, starting in August, where he has five [years] to play four," Edsall said.

Stringer, who is cleared to practice now and will be ready for the spring, said his knee is fine.

"It feels good right now, so I know I can do everything and I'm anxious to see how it's going to turn out," he said. "But I think it's going to turn out well."

The Huskies will open spring practice in mid-March. As per NCAA regulations, the team will practice 15 times before culminating the season in the annual Blue-White scrimmage, which will be held at Rentschler Field in early April. The 2007 season will open Sept. 1 at Duke, who went 0-12 last season.

Three More Verbals

Rivals.com reported late Sunday night that the Huskies picked up three more commitments on the first weekend of official visits.

Running back Kelmetrus Wylie, cornerback Gary Wilburn and defensive back Kijuan Dabney all committed to UConn after spending the weekend taking in the men's basketball game and touring the Burton Family Football Complex.

Wylie, from Washington-Wilkes High School in Georgia, had been on the Huskies' radar for some time before officially announcing his decision. The 6-foot, 205-pound running back also had interest from Kentucky and Maryland and is the second running back, behind Lehighton, Pa.'s Robbie Frey, to join the team. He finished with just over 2,000 yards and 21 touchdowns last season.

Wilburn, also from Washington-Wilkes, joins Bagsby, Harris Agbor and Jonathan Jean-Louis as defensive backs who have committed to the Huskies. He stands at 5-foot-11 and 185 pounds.

Dabney, a 6-foot, 185-pound receiver from Houston, is the third receiver UConn has brought in after Kashif Moore of Burlington, N.J. and Jamie Nixon, who is originally from Connecticut but is spending a year at Bridgeton Academy in Maine, committed earlier to the Huskies. Dabney runs a 4.5 40-yard dash and joins Agbor, who is from Mesquite, as the only recruits in this class from Texas.

The commits raise the total number of new players to 26.