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Another local offer is out to 6-2, 205 pound 3 star athlete Kadeem Trotter of Canton McKinley. Saw he had the Akron offer (along with most of the MAC) when Boston College offered him the other day. Unfortunately, he is visiting Iowa State this weekend and will be making his announcement shortly after. Hopefully, Reggie Corner can help sway him to the good guys, but sounds like Syracuse is the team to beat. Kind of going to LZips' point, and something that has been talked about, these are the guys Akron needs to keep home over schools like Syracuse, Iowa State (though Matt Campbell will make ISU a player for Stark County kids), Boston College and the rest of the MAC. But its not going to change overnight. TB is getting local prospects to buy in, but more winning seasons (and bowl wins) should help with guys like Trotter in future years. I like the local guys in the fold, and really it's not like they are much different (albeit position wise) than a guy like Trotter ... IE not a program changing, can't miss prospect ... But it will be nice to have a day where local prospects jump on an Akron offer early (which we are starting to see), but can then land/keep kids when "bigger" programs come calling. That's TBD, but all you can do is continue to win and see where the chips fall.

Since there was a thread about Logan Tulley-Tillman, I didn't see one about 6-5, 300 pound DL grad transfer Jelani Hamilton from The U. Looks like it happened in late May. He was a big time prospect coming out of St. Thomas Aquinas (Fla.) who has been injury riddled the past two years. http://www.gozips.com/sports/fball/2016-17/bios/hamilton_jelani_65qn?view=bio http://www.hurricanesports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?ATCLID=205558506 Maybe he is just another Michaelee Harris (who is no longer on the roster ... was still on it this spring), or maybe he can at least be like Moses McCray and be a solid depth addition to the interior line for a year. Btw, his photo on the Miami site is badass.

I don't want to get into over-analyzing the schedule at this point. But, hopefully we can get 2 OOC wins again, with the two home games. If so, we enter league play at 2-2 again. From there, lets face it, we cleaned up on the weakest opponents in the league at the right time last year. This year, there's no UMass, and Buffalo and Ken+ are road games. Those were 3 of the 4 weak opponents that we had must-win situations with last year. I usually hate the narrow view that the prognosticators usually have when it comes to assessing the MAC, but it's hard to argue with someone who doubts our ability to equal last year when they see the magnitude of the holes we have to fill. It's up to us to show them all that we've plugged those holes adequately.