Pitt FB Recruiting
Saturday Pitt Recruiting Notes
It’s been a fun day already! Was at the Pitt Football Camp this morning, interviewed a couple of big prospects (Kenny Pickett and Aliquippa’s Kwantel Raines), Pitt received a commitment from Pickett and offered a young prospect.
Hopefully, you checked out our first interview with our newly purchased equipment. Also, Pittsburgh Sports Now’s Joe Steigerwald took a bunch of photos from today and will post them shortly. Tomorrow, we’ll post our video interview with Raines. Over the next few months, look for more interviews, features with recruits and photographs thanks to the new equipment.
The equipment that we purchased wasn’t free and the site is free, so at anytime you’d want to help us offset our expenses, feel free to make a donation to the site. Trust me, between paying writers, site costs and equipment, I’m not making ANY money from the site, this is all a labor of love. The donation tab is at the top of the home page and anything would be appreciated. Now on to recruiting news. Yesterday, we received a VERY generous donation from one of our readers (Ronald Cindrich) which was VERY much appreciated.
Now on to the recruiting news of today.
**The Pitt coaching staff extended an offer to a really young player today. William Putnam (Chatham, Illinois) was at the camp today and afterwards received an offer from Pat Narduzzi. Putnam is only entering his sophomore season at Glenwood HS. Putnam (6-4, 245) is an offensive tackle and holds an offer from Illinois. I’ll post an interview with him later today. Interesting offer by the Panthers.
UPDATE (5:34 PM)-
**2017 Fairmont, West Virginia DT Darius Stills was in town today at Pitt’s camp and was looking to impress the Pitt coaches. After his workout, I talked with Stills about how things went.
“I think I did really well! I went 10 for 10 on the 1-on-1 drills”, said Stills. “The Pitt coaches and players loved me, they want me to come up for a visit soon. I talked with Coach Narduzzi for a solid 45 minutes. He’s a great guy to be around and I’m very comfortable around him.”
Darius Stills at Pitt Football Camp – Photo courtesy of Darius Stills
What about an offer?
“They did talk about offers but they didn’t offer yet. They’re very interested and want me to call them in a couple of days”, said Stills.
UPDATE (5:56 PM)-
**We told you earlier about 2019 OT William Putnam (Chathum, Illinois) receiving an offer from Pitt. Moments ago, I got Putnam’s reaction to today and the offer.
“I was very excited when I received an offer from Pitt”, said Putnam. “Coach Peterson said I had an impressive performance and he liked what he saw at camp. ”
Putnam just finished up his freshman season, I asked him why he made the decision to camp at Pitt today.
“I came to camp to learn more about the game but at the same time to get exposure. I’ve had contact with Pitt previously so I did think an offer was a possibility.”
William Putnam at Pitt Football Camp – Photo courtesy of William Putnam
“I have one other offer from Illinois but I’ve received numerous camp invites”, said Putnam. “I’ve been up to Michigan State twice already and talked with their coaches. It’s early in my recruiting process but I’ve liked everything that I’ve seen at Pitt and I believe when Coach Narduzzi gave me the offer he meant it.”
Putnam is 6-4 and 245 lbs, what position is Pitt recruiting him at and what were his thoughts on the city of Pittsburgh.
“I believe they are looking at me more of a guard or center. As far as the city of Pittsburgh itself, it seems like a really cool city. The facilities are great and having the Steelers training in the same facility and practice on the same fields is really cool”, said Putnam.
Finally, I asked Putnam what it says about Pitt that they offered him so early?
“I believe it shows that they want to start early on building a relationship with me.”
UPDATE (8:13 PM)-
**I’ve just been told by another recruit that he plans on committing to Pitt. Like I did with QB Kenny Pickett, I’m going to let the recruit make the announcement himself. This recruit trusted me enough to tell me, so I’ll show him the respect of not stealing his moment in the spotlight. The 1 thing that I can tell you is that this will be an out of state recruit. He also told me that the official announcement might not come for a couple of days but Pitt does have another commitment. In fact, when this recruit commits, I’ll have a video interview with him.
// Header image: Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh by Flickr user gam9551 | CC BY-ND 2.0
