Since the news broke of Timpview hiring Cary Whittingham to replace Louis Wong as its football coach I’ve been asked frequently how the move will affect BYU recruiting. It’s not a question that anyone could accurately answer until we see how it plays out in the coming years.

Since I started covering recruiting back in 2002, Timpview has sent almost all of its division-one prospects to BYU. There have been some notable exceptions such as Xavier Sua-filo and Chris Badger, but the general rule is that if you’re a division-one quality prospect playing at Timpview, you’ll go on to sign with BYU.

Timpview has produced an impressive amount of talent over the past ten years with the following having signed with the Cougars:

-Dallas Reynolds (2003)

-Brian Soi (2003)

-Harvey Unga (2005)

-Luke Ashworth (2005)

-Matt Reynolds (2005)

-Stephen Covey (2005)

-Famika Anae (2007)

-Houston Reynolds (2007)

-Eathyn Manumaleuna (2007)

-Kevan Bills (2008)

-Michael Alisa (2008)

-Tui Crichton (2009)

-Craig Bills (2009)

-Bronson Kaufusi (2010)

-Corbin Kaufusi (2011)

-Colby Jorgensen (2011)

Sixteen players in all with over half of those having direct family relations to coaches or players that were in the program at the time of their signing. Subsequently, direct family relations may underscore the real reason BYU has seen so much success in recruiting Timpview more than anything else.

Timpview is very much a BYU community with its area populated with BYU alumni, employees and most of all, fans of the Cougar football program. Utes are rare within the community which makes it nothing short of ironic that Timpview’s new head football coach is the very brother of Kyle Whittingham.

But will Cary dry up Timpview’s pipeline to BYU?

It’s been my experience that most High School coaches don’t play favorites in helping their players decide on where to play at the next level. Most coaches will intervene when asked, but largely leave the decision completely up to the player and his family.

Granted that there are some notable exceptions. A current BYU player, who played for a Salt Lake area high school, was mocked incessantly by members of his coaching staff for having committed to the Cougars. Such actions by coaches are rare, counterproductive  and certainly not the rule.

It’s highly doubtful that Cary Whittingham will create this sort of atmosphere at Timpview, but it is reasonable to assume that Utah will find more success recruiting at the school.

Over my years covering recruiting, Utah has seldom even tried recruiting Timpview athletes. This will almost assuredly change as conversations between the Timpview staff and the Utah football staff about their prospects should continue and even increase. I mean, they are brothers, after all.

How this affects BYU in attracting Timpview prospects remains to be seen, however. Will players that would normally choose BYU opt for its in-state rival or will it not change at all? It’s something that I’ll be sure to note closely in the coming years.

At this current juncture it’s safe to say that Utah will likely benefit from Cary Whittingham being the head coach at Timpview. For a lot of BYU fans, Utah finding any success anywhere hurts their program and especially when that success is found in BYU’s own backyard.

According to Kalolo Manumaleuga, who committed to BYU last week, Ma’atuau Brown committed to BYU coaches following an unofficial visit to the school. Manumaleuga is Brown’s cousin and both of them traveled to Provo this week to take a closer look at BYU.

Brown is a 6-foot-5, 350 defensive tackle prospect who signed with Washington out of high school back in 2011. He was a non-qualifier and played for Cerritos junior college last season.

Brown had been receiving interest from Western Michigan and a host of Pac-12 programs according to scout.com. Brown should have three years to play two when he signs with BYU this coming February.

We’ll have more on Brown and his commit later.

It isn’t even June yet, but BYU coaches are scouring the junior college ranks quite aggressively which is somewhat of a departure from its typical recruiting process. They recently landed Kalolo Manumaleuga and according to totalbluesports.com, they have offers out to at least another three junior college defensive linemen.

Most recruitment of junior college prospects doesn’t occur until late in the process. Incoming JC players are typically viewed as stop-gap measures — recruited to immediately fill-in at positions where the cupboard is bare for the following season. Most junior college recruiting doesn’t begin in earnest until after the season starts and immediately thereafter for most collegiate programs as a result.

With BYU’s top six defensive linemen (Eathyn Manumaleuna, Romney Fuga, Ian Dulan, Russell Tialavea, Jordan Richardson, and Simonte Vea) this coming season all being seniors, the need to mine for immediate help at the position is paramount among the recruiting needs for 2013.

Granted that the cupboard isn’t completely bare with incoming players such as Theodore King joining existing players such as Marques Johnson, Mike Muehlmann and a host of walkons who hope to earn starting spots come 2013. Add Bronson Kaufusi, who is set to return this July, along with Kesni Tuasinga and Aulelio Olomua, who are both set to return within months before the start of the 2013 season and they should have bodies aplenty.

The problem is that none of the players looked at to contribute in 2013 will likely be game-tested following 2012. Indeed the competition should be fierce and wide-open at all of the three defensive front positions starting in spring of 2013.

For this reason it shouldn’t be a surprise that defensive line coach Steve Kaufusi moved so quickly in securing the commit of Kalolo Manumaleuga, who I reported on here. Although Manumaleuga has his sites set on playing linebacker, BYU coaches are hopeful that he’ll contribute at the defensive end position, where he could start immediately upon arrival.

Fans can anticipate BYU signing at least two more defensive linemen who will be looked at as immediate contributors for 2013, and as many as four.

The pitch of immediate playing time should be attractive for top junior college talent such as Ma’ataua Brown from Cerritos junior college. Brown is a defensive tackle prospect, who will be visiting BYU this weekend on an unofficial visit. Brown holds an offer from Washington and has a lot of interest from most Pac-12 programs.

According to totalbluesports, BYU currently has offers out to Marquel Combs of of Pierce junior college, Tutulupeata Mataele of Mt. San Antonio College, and most recently to Kyle Peko of Cerritos. All three of the above are defensive tackle prospects.

BYU gained a commit from Nathan Debeikes from Thousand Oaks, Calif. Debeikes is a 6-foot-1, 200 prospect who will likely play outside linebacker for BYU.

“BYU is really the only school I’ve ever wanted to play for growing up,” said Debeikes about his commit. “When they offered me I accepted immediately.”

Debeikes has definite LDS mission plans and will likely serve his mission straight out of high school. He’ll sign with BYU as part of its upcoming 2013 class.

Debeikes cited BYU’s academics, spiritual environment and football tradition as the primary reasons for his commit. He also has a lot of family who attended BYU and relatives that currently live in the Provo area.

Debeikes had received a lot of recent interest from Utah and Colorado, but jumped on BYU’s offer the moment it was offered.

“I talked to Coach (Bronco) Mendenhall and he wanted to offer me and asked if I’d accept,” said Debeikes. “I told him that I would and that’s how it happened. I couldn’t be more excited right now about having the chance to play for the school I’ve always dreamed of playing.”

We’ll have more on Debeikes a bit later.

Noah Hartsock recently did two interviews regarding his prospects for the next level.

http://www.hoopsworld.com/seniors-under-the-radar-part-four

http://www.nbadraftblog.com/2012-articles/may/nba-draft-blog-interview-with-noah-hartsock.html

As reported by totalbluesports.com, BYU received a commit from Lone Peak’s Lone Talon Shumway. Shumway is a 6-foot-3, 190 athlete who has played at wide receiver, running back and at linebacker for the Knights. He’ll most likely play at wide receiver for BYU.

Shumway held offers from Utah and Utah State and will likely serve an LDS mission before enrolling. We’ll have more on Shumway and his commit as he becomes available for comment.

It’s not often that recruiting news hits on Saturday night, but Phil Ford did his best to change that earlier this evening. Ford used twitter to express his earnest desire to join BYU’s football program after being baptized a member of the LDS church about a month ago.

So who is he?

Ford is a 6-foot-6, 330 offensive lineman from Kansas City, Missouri who signed with Kansas out of High School. After failing to qualify academically he joined Iowa Western’s football program and redshirted this past season.

Since attending Iowa Western he’s maintained a 2.5 grade point average and is set to graduate this coming December. Kansas has maintained contact with other Big12 programs showing interested according to Ford.

Ford attends a ward that includes a lot of BYU graduates and they speak very highly of the school which has piqued Ford’s interest. One of the people he’s met is BYU transfer Jake Heaps who apparently still talks very highly of the program he decided to transfer from.

“Jake (Heaps) says that he misses BYU a lot for a lot of reasons and that it was very hard for him to transfer,” says Ford. “He talks about how it’s a great environment for LDS people and he really does miss a lot of those things about BYU.”

Ford sent off an email to the football program about two weeks ago and is anxiously awaiting word from the coaching staff.

“BYU sounds like the perfect school for me,” said Ford. “Everyone I talk to absolutely loves the place and now that I’m a member of the church, I want to go there and play football for them more than anything. I’m hoping that the coaches there get in touch with me and offer me a scholarship because it’s really the only school I want to play for right now.”

We’ll have more on Ford as this situation continues to develop.

BYU football received a commit from safety Drew Reilly, who received his release from Colorado State last week. According to his father Keith, Drew made a visit to BYU and was met with an official offer shortly thereafter. Drew has since committed to BYU and will join the team this fall.

Drew is the younger brother of Utah defensive end Trevor Reilly. Drew started four games for the Rams last season as a true freshman and was named as their special teams player of the year.

Drew is 6-foot-3 safety who will redshirt this coming season, due to NCAA transfer rules, before competing for a spot come the 2013 season. We’ll have much more on Drew Reilly and his BYU commit later.

Utah defensive tackle Star Lotulelei has received a lot of mention on the radio airwaves and the message boards since the NFL draft concluded. Most analysts project him as a first-round pick and as the top defensive tackle prospect for the 2013 draft.

Obviously such projections are fluid at this early stage, but regardless, it’s safe to say that Lotulelei is someone any coach would love to have anchoring their defensive front — including BYU.

Those who follow BYU recruiting closely remember that BYU not only committed the former Bingham Miner, but signed him back in 2007.

So what happened?

Consider the following list of players signed by Bronco Mendenhall: Scotty Ebert, Seta Pohahau, Atem Bol, Jordan Afo, and Star Lotulelei.

All five of them failed to qualify academically after signing with BYU out of high school and went the junior college route. BYU didn’t re-offer any of the five prospects although they may yet offer Afo, who entered Snow’s football program in 2010.

All of those listed didn’t resurface on the recruiting scene out of junior college, save Lotulelei, who surfaced in a big way. Many programs showed interest in Lotulelei out JC, but BYU chose to stay on the sidelines — showing almost no interest while not re-extending an offer.

So why not?

BYU didn’t have a pressing need for immediate defensive line help back in 2010, when Lotulelei signed with the Utes, but that was only part of the reason for not pursuing the mammoth DT prospect. The bigger reason likely was its recent experience with its own JC transfer linemen — Bernard Afutiti and Jesse Taufi.

Most BYU fans aren’t familiar with those two names, but they should have been. Afutiti and Taufi both signed with BYU in 2008 and went on to prove to be two of the better line performers I’ve seen since first covering BYU practices back in 2003.

Both of them flamed out in the classroom and never played a down for the team while taking up valuable scholarship spots. BYU coaches were likely heartbroken to see two extremely talented players not see the field due to not hacking it academically and were subsequently hesitant to pursue Lotulelei, as a result.

I was told by a BYU assistant that they did not pursue Lotulelei due to existing academic concerns.

It’s impossible to say definitively if BYU would have been able to sign Lotulelei even if they had pursued him. Ardent Cougar fans will argue that BYU could have had him if they wanted him while Ute fans will argue that BYU didn’t have a chance regardless.

After he committed to Utah Lotulelei stated that he didn’t care that BYU didn’t offer since he liked Utah better anyway, but those feelings often come about after a recruit feels spurned by a particular program. What we do know is that Lotulelei once had BYU as his top school, signing with it out of High School, and perhaps would have had it on top again had BYU coaches pursued him out of junior college.

Since signing with Utah Lotulelei has not only seen tremendous success on the field, but in the classroom as reported by Dirk Facer here.

So could BYU have used Lotulelei this coming season? Who couldn’t use the top-rated defensive tackle in the country is the short answer. Specifically to BYU, it looks to be in good shape with returning three-year starters Ian Dulan, Eathyn Manumaleuna, Romney Fuga and Russell Tialavea, but as good as each of them are, Lotulelei is in a class by himself.

No school has a perfect recruiting record and it’s likely if BYU had the opportunity to recruit Lotulelei again that it would do so. As evidenced by it offering Tenny Palepoi, who was a non-qualifier out of high school, this past year, BYU may be more willing to take some academic risks moving forward.

Dave Rose announced today that 6-foot-3 combo signee Cory Calvert will play a year before leaving for his planned LDS mission service. As recently as last week, Calvert was planning on leaving for a mission before playing.

I recently did a writeup on Calvert here

Here’s the entire release from BYU: