Second signing day quiet for Panthers
Only two players opted to continue their football careers Wednesday at Pitt, hardly a spectacular finish to national signing day, but one that coach Pat Narduzzi can explain with his logic to the whole recruiting deal, mercurial as it is.
“I want guys that love Pittsburgh, and that’s what it comes down to,” Narduzzi said, pounding the podium at his annual news conference on the first Wednesday in February. “You either love Pittsburgh and you want to stay here and play for your city, or you don’t. And if you don’t, I’m good. We wouldn’t win with you anyway. “It’s beautiful.”
The official additions of graduatetransfer offensive lineman Nolan Ulizio and two-star New York (by way of New Jersey) linebacker SirVocea Dennis might be beautiful to
Narduzzi, but they didn’t do much to pretty up Pitt’s 2019 recruiting class, mostly secured in December’s early signing period.
That 20-man group, tied with three other programs for the 48th-best in the country, according to Rivals.com’s team rankings Wednesday afternoon, is Pitt’s lowest-rated under Narduzzi since the offseason before his first year as coach — the past three finished at 36, 38 and 29, respectively. It’s also 10 spots lower than it was when 18 players signed Dec. 19, and it no doubt would have received a perception boost had four-star Aliquippa defensive back M.J. Devonshire picked the Panthers over Kentucky in the morning.
“We’re happy to announce two more signees … the only two that we expected today, as well, I might add,” Narduzzi said, essentially confirming that his staff knew the ship had sailed on another highly regarded prospect in their immediate area.
But while one player can be a shot in the arm, he rarely makes or breaks a recruiting cycle, and Narduzzi wasn’t about to spend much time discussing any WPIAL elephant in the room.
He wisely pointed out that no one will care what state a Panther came from when they look at the roster, as long as that roster is playing in big games and helping to win more ACC Coastal titles. In Ulizio (you-LIZ-e-oh) and Dennis (whose unique first name is pronounced sirVAWS-e-eh, but goes by Voss), Narduzzi heaped praise on “one old man, one young man” — both of whom ended up here via serendipitous circumstances.
“In the end, if we’re in the ACC championship game and you’re looking for the initials at the end of the city they’re in — is it PA, is it FL, is it MA? — it doesn’t matter where they’re from,” Narduzzi
said. “It matters what they do on the field.”
For Ulizio, the initials at the end of his city will be OH, but the former Michigan Wolverine — “[Coach Jim Harbaugh] did not want him to leave, so that’s always a good thing,” Narduzzi said — has a local tie that aided in steering him to Pitt. His whole family grew up in Center Township, according to Narduzzi, and are “longtime Pitt people.”
“He was our No. 1 offensive tackle, and not only are we excited to have him, we are lucky to have him,” Narduzzi said of the 6-foot-5, 305pound Ulizio, who will start off at right tackle. “I say ‘lucky’ because he turned down a bunch of people.”
As for Dennis, a 6-1, 210pound Syracuse native, Narduzzi lucked out in a different way. He was on the road with tight ends coach Tim Salem recruiting seniors-tobe in New Jersey when he ended up at Peddie School, a post-graduate academy that had a lightly recruited senior linebacker with his recruitment still open.
“Linebacker?” Narduzzi
said that day, eyebrows raised. “We could use a linebacker.”
So, he began talking to the athletic director about Dennis, and they told him he could be in the NFL someday. Narduzzi did a quick Google search, watched Dennis’ highlights on his phone and was impressed with an under-the-radar prospect who wasn’t far removed from a torn Achilles tendon that cost him his senior season at Christian Brothers Academy and pushed him to the prep school route.
But it wasn’t a slam dunk, until Narduzzi saw one — two, actually.
“We pulled him down [out of class], interviewed him, talked to him for a while and he showed me a couple other plays,” Narduzzi recalled, adding that Dennis told him he could bench-press 225 pounds 13 times.
Narduzzi then asked a simple question: “Can you dunk?”
Sure enough, there’s video evidence of Dennis jumping over two people to slam one, and Narduzzi liked it so much that he displayed
it on the wall Wednesday as an interruption from his remarks. Projecting the rest of this recruiting class isn’t nearly as easy, and the past two summers Narduzzi has brought in at least one extra graduate transfer — “There’s a chance, and we’re looking for the best available,” he said of a third in a row — so it might not be finished.
For the most part, though, unless Dennis really is a “diamond in the rough,” as Narduzzi put it, or Ulizio is capable of making an instant impact, the 2019 offseason will have come to a lessthan-ideal close.
“We’re looking for the best football players, and if it’s in our backyard, that’s great,” Narduzzi said. “We’re going to recruit the best, and sometimes you get them, sometimes you don’t get them, sometimes you don’t want them. That’s how it goes sometimes, just based on need and what fits your needs.”