QB Pellicciotti makes commitment to Towson
Liberty star ‘felt really wanted’ with Tigers
Liberty football accomplished a lot in 2022, winning a share of the Carroll County championship and reaching the second round of the Class 2A/1A West Regional playoffs. A big reason for the success was the play of senior quarterback Jack Pellicciotti.
Pellicciotti isn’t straying too far from home to play at the next level, as last week he committed to play at Towson University.
“I really just liked everything about the school,” Pellicciotti said. “For me, as I went along with this process and I was trying to find a school, it was obviously the football aspect, but it was also where I wanted to be for the next four or five years. It was so much more than football. It was, where is this going to rank academically? And everything like that.”
Pellicciotti threw for 2,236 yards and 27 touchdowns with only four interceptions in his senior season. He also rushed for 400 yards and eight more touchdowns.
He said he attended camps over the past two years and considered several Patriot League schools, including Georgetown, Lafayette and Lehigh. In the end, he also considered Shepherd, a Division II school in West Virginia, but “it felt right to end up at Towson.”
At Towson, he’ll be reunited with former Liberty teammate Tommy Nelson, a 2022 graduate who redshirted in the fall. Pellicciotti said Nelson played a big role in turning his attention toward the Colonial Athletic Association school.
“I’ve been in touch with Towson for a while,” Pellicciotti said. “When I wanted
to get recruited out of high school, I was talking to Tommy a lot at the time. Tommy was really in love with the school. I was like, ‘I’m going to go to some camps. I’m going to try it.’ They were actually my first college football camp I went to.”
Pellicciotti said along with his high school coaches and family, Nelson was a valuable resource for he and teammate Sam Evans as they navigated the recruiting process.
“Tommy really helped me. We’ve all been working together,” Pellicciotti said. “Once Tommy committed, he’s always been helping me and Sam get an idea of where we want to be.”
Towson went 6-5 last season and parted ways with 14-year coach Rob Ambrose in November. Pete Shinnick was hired in December to lead the program.
“The new coaching staff came in and I got to sit down and talk to all of them,” Pellicciotti said. “I felt really wanted there. This whole thing, I wanted to commit to a school where I felt wanted at. It just felt like a great fit all around.”
Pellicciotti said he also spoke with Towson’s new offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Brian Sheppard, who agreed he’d be a great fit in their system.
“I know Coach Sheppard is bringing in an air-raid offense, so I sat down [and] talked with him on my visit for a little under two hours,” Pellicciotti said. “He came to the school and visited, I saw a lot of tendencies and a lot of controls at the quarterback position, a lot of it is quarterback-led. I felt I did a lot of that in high school, changing protection, being able to manipulate certain tendencies of the offense to find your key matchups. I saw a lot of that as we were talking about it. He said when I described my offense in high school, it was a great fit for me.”