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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Wilder and practice notes

So by now you know that James Wilder Jr. did NOT commit to Georgia this afternoon, as had been reported that he would. The running back-linebacker, rated the No. 3 prospect in the entire nation by Rivals, instead went with Florida State.

This is why covering recruiting is such a hazardous business. In defense of Fanhouse.com, the original report may have actually been true at the time. Wilder may have picked Georgia, then changed his mind overnight. Who knows. We're talking about teenagers here. Just look at Dexter Morant.

In the long run, this probably isn't the worst thing to happen to Georgia. It still probably leads for Isaiah Crowell, out of Columbus. And, as I tweeted just now, after watching the first few minutes of Georgia's football practice, they appear set on continuing to play football here despite Wilder's announcement.

Speaking of which, practice notes:

- Receiver Logan Gray was in a walking boot, which is never a great sign. He rolled his ankle in practice Tuesday, according to UGAsports.com. We'll ask the coaches about it later.

- Otherwise, Georgia's players seem to be healing up, as evidenced by the empty stationary bikes:

LB Akeem Dent (toe injury), WR Rantavious Wooten (left knee) and LB Mike Gilliard (undisclosed injury) were all still in green non-contact jerseys, but were running around. That gives credence to head coach Mark Richt's hope that they'd all be ready for the opener.

S Bacarri Rambo, who's been dealing with a minor injury, was also in green but was going through drills with the rest of the secondary players.

- Receiver Kris Durham, who was hurt last week and skipped the scrimmage, was back in red.

- Starting guard Cordy Glenn (mononucleosis) still wasn't out there. Ditto for starting center Ben Jones, but he's not expected back for another couple weeks after having his knee scoped.

3 comments:

AthensHomerDawg said...

good post..thanx for update!

JasonC said...

Do we have anyone except for AJ that is healthy and can play WR?

But losing Wilder (not as surprising as Matt Hinton made it seem), we really need to get Crowell. However, I don't think he is going to make a decision until signing day, as he seems to enjoy the attention.

One concern is too often Georgia seems to be the runner-up for top talent. Sure, we get a lot of great guys, but we get strung out a lot too.

Anonymous said...

The problem is that kids are becoming much more media-savvy. I don't know Wilder personally, so I can't speak to whether he was trying to play the media or not. But I have no doubt that some of these high-profile kids have their friends leak disinformation to the press so when they make a "commitment day switch", it becomes big news and gets more coverage than it might have otherwise. You'll never convince me that Da'Rick Rogers, for example, didn't know that he was Tennessee-bound days or even weeks before Signing Day. But you get to become a star when you do it on NSD.