Andersen on recruiting class

Gary Andersen knows coaches across the country are reciting phrases from the college coaching manual today. Everybody is thrilled with the names on their list of recruits and will claim it’s the best class ever.

Andersen doesn’t want that.

“I hate to be ‘that coach,’” Andersen said. “Because I know you hear it all the time. But we had a lot of success this year.”

The second-year USU coach was quick to qualify the term success. While he’s more than pleased with the newest batch of Aggies, he knows he wants future classes to be even better.

“We set up clear objectives about where we wanted to go with recruiting,” he said, “and I think we went out and did just that this year.”

Specifically, he wanted to restore Utah State’s presence in, well, the state of Utah. After being mostly neglected by previous coaches, the state had not been much of a recruiting ground for the Aggies. Andersen vowed to change that for a pair of reasons. One: There was plenty of talent in the state to sign. Two: He needed to rebuild a level of trust with local coaches and let them, and their players, know that Utah State welcomes and wants them.

There are 11 players hailing from the Beehive State in this class and that’s about where Andersen said he thinks it should be.

Pleasant Grove lineman Bryce Walker, Andersen said, is a layer that never would have considered Utah State a couple of years ago. And despite some significant efforts to lure the player away from USU by other colleges — colleges Andersen said are significantly better than Utah State on a national perception scale — Walker stood firm in his commitment and signed up to be an Aggie.

There are still a couple of empty spots on the roster, though, and Andersen said he intends on filling those with late-qualifying players at the defensive end and tight end positions.

He said this year’s class is much better than the last one — and he liked that one a lot.

“We got ourselves into some very heated recruiting battles this go around,” Andersen said. “We won some of them and we lost some of them. But we are in the hunt and getting players Utah State didn’t get in the past. We’re getting better.”