Georgia RB is latest UConn signing

When the UConn football program announced the 19 high school players who signed national letters of intent during the early signing period, 10 of the signees came from schools in either New England or the tri-state area.

Heading into next month’s late signing period, UConn has managed to secure commitments from a pair of Florida prospects as well as one each from North Carolina and Georgia.

With Miami’s Jalon Ferrell and Tampa’s Messiah Turner committing a week apart, that gives the Huskies eight defensive backs as part of the recruiting class.

Lorenza Surgers, a defensive end from Cary, N.C., was the first player to commit following the end of the early signing period. Dante Black, a 200-pound running back who ran for nearly 2,000 yards and 32 touchdowns as a senior at Brookwood School in Thomasville, Ga., is the most recent commit.

The rivals.com database lists Black as having 22 scholarship offers, including one from fellow American Athletic Conference program Tulane. Two service academies and four Ivy League programs, including Yale, were on the list of interested schools. Black should fit in well academically with the current Huskies team. At a recent UConn men’s basketball game, student-athletes with at least a 3.0 grade-point average in either the most recent fall or spring semester were honored at halftime. A total of 41 football players were recognized for their work in the classroom, the most going back to the previous 19 seasons. Harrison Newman was among those honored for a 4.0 GPA.

UCONN SIGNEE ON FAST TRACK

When Randy Edsall returned for his second stint as

the UConn football coach, he expressed the need to get faster. It’s safe to say incoming receiver Heron Maurisseau-O’Neal will help in that

department.

The star out of St. Anthony’s in Melville, N.Y., is undefeated in the 55-meter dash this season and has set a personal best three times in January.

He ran a time of 6.45 on Jan. 13 at the Molloy Stanner

Games and a week later was in New Haven at the Yale Invitational where he twice clocked times of 6.43 seconds. The best came on Sunday when he won the Catholic High School Athletic Association title, finishing in 6.39 (matching the best high school time in New York in the indoor season) and was also a part of the winning 4x200 relay team to lead St. Anthony’s to the team title.