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Signing Day '09 HOUSTON (Feb. 4) – Rice University head football coach David Bailiff announced a 2009 signing class of 24 recruits here Wednesday afternoon before gathered media. The beaming Rice head man predicted a number of those new signees will be able to contribute immediately, and in Coachspeak we all can interpret that as meaning he’s got several schoolboys in the bag he thinks will play as freshmen. “These are 24 young men that we think can come into this football program,” Coach Bailiff announced. “Some of them are going to offer immediate depth, and some can actually come in and play. They’re big enough and fast enough. They are strong enough.” “I think that of these 24, a lot of them offer us immediate help. Every year you try to recruit better than you did the year before -- and I think we recruited well last year, but I think we did better this year. I think this is a class with which we can compete for conference championships.” Out of that class of 24 lads the Rice coaching staff hauled in 18 Texans, six of them from the Houston area. Rice signed two more Canadians, added one signeefrom Minnesota, one from Arizona, and bagged two from Oklahoma – one of which was expected earlier to sign with Tulsa. For the local orientation, Coach Bailiff gave a tip of the hat to area high school coaches. “As for the 18 Texans and the six area kids,” he said, “you can’t thank those high school coaches enough for all they do to help us recruit these young men. That’s one of the reasons we believe so much that some of these young guys can come in and play immediately -- because of the great job that Texas high school coaches do with them.” Rice needs depth at safety and linebacker, and it needs warm bodies for the offensive and defensive lines. Mission accomplished, Coach said. “One or two of the safeties are guys that are pieces of the puzzle; they could act actually moved to the linebacker position,” he noted. “We’ve taken the three offense of linemen, and the greatest news is they are bigger than me; they’re even bigger than Brett Wagner over there, and that’s even more exciting.” “We knew we needed to increase our size, but we also needed to increase our speed, like everybody else does -- and I think if you look at that list with Donte Moore, a 21.2 200 metter receiver; Alex Francis and what he’s done in track, you can see we are now a bigger, faster, stronger football team, just by adding these 24 players.” Coach B also made reference to a local recruit, Andre Geautraux. “That’s the guy who had 459 yards total against LaMarque,” he noted. “Those are the kind of guys we need they are not only great, great athletes, but they are very solid students. This is a class that we can not only win championships with, but we can have a 100% graduation rate with.” The effect of Rice’s glorious ten-win season this past fall cannot be understated, the Rice mentor allowed. “I think winning 10, I mean, that was paramount to Sam McGuffie’s coming here. You know, you continue to try to build momentum in programs, and I think that’s what we did with the 10th win, with the bowl win.” “With Sam McGufie coming here, that made it great for some other young men to fall in and follow Sam, because they want to be part of building a program. And that’s what were doing. We’re building a great program.” “It’s a program that’s going to do everything right, you know where we expect these young men to graduate and we expect them to win championships. And that’s what parents want, you go to college to prepare yourself for life, and that’s what we do at Rice. Oh, and along the way, we’re going to go to bowl games. Instead of saying that we been to one bowl game in 45 years ago, that two out of the last three sounds a lot better.” Coach Bailiff also cast kudos in the direction of Rice AD Chris Del Conte and University President David Leebron, both of whom, he said, allowed the Rice football program to build momentum. “I mean, Chris has just announced plans to start construction after next season on a new facility,” he revealed, “and in these tough economic times where else is that happening?” The now third-year coach said that improvement on the recruiting dotted line isn’t really of matter of things getting easier, but rather one of achieving a greater level of knowledge about Rice as an institution. “It’s a matter of us refining our techniques as we learn about Rice,” he said, referring to himself and his staff. “When we learned about what Rice has to offer it enables us to add it to identify the young men that are great fits here.” "I’ve said this before, when I got here I thought we could win because of the relationships with high school coaches. But if you come to Rice and see how Rice works and its global reputation, it’s an easy sell to walk into a young man’s home. And we’re looking for the young man that aren’t looking to make a four or five year commitment. We’re asking them to make a 40 or 50 year decision -- and the people that come to Rice have no problem making that kind of decision.” Coach Bailiff stressed that his recruits may not always have the ‘star’ power that some will possess by way of fabulous high school careers. But the key is to be a good judge of talent, as well as a good judge of character. “We’ll always be a developmental school, where were going to have to grow our own,” he noted. “But when you look at a 6-8 offensive linemen who doesn’t start shaving yet, I firmly believe he’s got a lot of growth left in him.” “You know, there’s no telling how big some of these kids are going to wind up by the time they start shaving. And that’s part of trying to project, you know, you look at shoulders. You look at their speed, and you do you look at their whiskers, if somebody’s got a heavy beard, and that’s about it. But if they’re not shaving yet they’re still growing.” --PTH List of
signees.... Coach
Bailiff's Wednesday press conference.... 'This class can win Conference USA' By Mark Anderson HOUSTON (Feb. 4) -- David Bailiff clearly expects to win, not just in 2008, but in future years as well. When talking about expecting to win, he said, “That comes with going to a bowl game, and we can’t change that.”
“I think last year we recruited a very good class, and each year you want to recruit better than you did the year before. And I think we did that.” Several players captured Coach Bailiff’s attention in this class. One that did was defensive tackle Alex Lowry. At 6’2” and two-hundred and ninety-five pounds, Lowry already has impressive size. But his strength is what caught Bailiff’s eye. “He’s already bench pressing 450 pounds,” Bailiff said. But as impressive as Lowry may be, it was someone else who put the gleam in Bailiff’s eye and made his face light up as he talked about him—Taylor McHargue, the quarterback out of Cedar Park. When asked about the quarterback situation, Coach Bailiff said, “I know we already have very talented quarterbacks here on campus, and I know Taylor is very talented.” Coach Bailiff then compared Taylor McHargue to another Owl quarterback you may have heard of on this site before—Chase Clement. Bailiff’s eyes gleamed as he told The Webletter that in his eyes, he measured up to Chase favorably. Bailiff also pointed out that the depth at quarterback helped recruiting in another way. “That’s the reason Zaunbrecher was attracted to this job, Bailiff said. “He’s a guy that has developed a lot of quarterbacks over the years.” While Taylor certainly had Coach Bailiff smiling, he also said, “It’s going to be a wide-open competition in the spring, and the good news is they are all very talented.” Yes, indeed they are. As this reporter left the R-Room, I looked down on the field to see two young men—Nick Fanuzzi and Ryan Lewis. Lewis was standing around the fifteen yard-line when he arched a pass for a target that simulated the fade/leap route that Jarett Dillard ran to perfection here. The hole in the top of the target was not big at all. But it didn’t need to be—Lewis put it right in. Ready for spring drills?
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For Coach
Bailiff to say, “I think this class can win Conference USA” means that in his
eyes, there is something he sees that is very special about this class. Bailiff elaborated
on what that something was when he said, “It’s a class that possesses amazing
size, amazing speed, and amazing strength.