Eye On Recruiting: JUCO Singing Day

Spoke to Coach Wells today about the three young men that have signed with UNM and Coach Wells said it best. "It's A Great Day to Be A Lobo!"

The University of New Mexico is losing 4 starters off this year’s offensive line aka “The Hitmen” this year as Vince Natali, Devin Clark, Anthony Kilby, and Bart Miller eligibility is up. So the Lobo coaching staff has been hitting the JUCO recruiting trail hard this year to fill in some much needed spots. In an impromptu press conference this afternoon Coach Long said, “we were forced to hit the JC’s hard for O-linemen because of the players we lost.”

Another need next year is wide receiver as UNM loses their two All-MWC wide receivers Marcus Smith and Travis Brown

With that said, today was the start of the JUCO signing period and Coach Long and his staff received paperwork from 2 offensive linemen and one wide receiver. We have learned that they are awaiting paperwork on a third offensive lineman as well.

Here are the three JUCO’s that signed today

6-3 280 OL Karlin Givens (Holmes College)

6-3 315 OL Joshua Taufelele (Foothills College)

6-2 210 WR Bryant Williams (Coffeyville CC)

TheRedMenace.com has learned that the other offensive linemen expected to become a Lobo (hopefully tomorrow) is

6-3 290 Center Ben Contreras (CC of San Francisco)

For those of you not aware Ben Contreras is a JUCO 1^st team all-American that had originally committed to Ole Miss. While most schools had given up on Ben… UNM continued to pursue him. The coaching staff at Ole Miss was let go and the team that stayed with him will now have a 1^st team All-American playing for them next year and beyond.

Our crack recruiting staff got a hold of Coach Long to ask him about today’s signees (Unfortunately he cannot talk about Ben Contreras as he doesn’t have the paperwork in hand.) and Rocky answered the questions. We allowed the newspaper guys to tag along J Just kidding guys… Just kidding!

Click here to listen to Coach Long’s presser!

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Programming Note

Don’t forget to watch the NFL network this Friday @3:00 MST  as TheRedMenace.com writer Lee Roy Lucero will be on the NFL Network College show talking about the upcoming New Mexico Bowl.