The summer recruiting process ongoing this weekend at WVU as 7-on-7 camps are taking place in Morgantown. WVU safeties coach Tony Gibson says they’re expecting 24-28 teams in all throughout the weekend.
“We’ve had a great reception from kids all over the tri-state area — Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland. It’s been really good,” Gibson said. “We’ve had a lot of great kids in camp the last couple of weeks and are just trying to finish it up this week.”
The camps give the coaching staff a better feel for a potential recruit’s competitiveness and overall talent.
“It’s one of the biggest things of our program,” Gibson said. “These camps are kind of our lifelines. We get a lot of kids through here on a short time.
“There will be some potential guys in the 2015 class that will be here that we will be checking out and keep a close eye on,” he continued. “Sometimes you even find a freshman or a sophomore that you really like that can kind of go under the radar.”
Along with recruiting, Gibson already is trying to get a breakdown on WVU’s future opponents this upcoming season, including the Big 12 opener at Oklahoma.
“We’re doing summer scouting reports right now and the last two days I’ve been doing all Oklahoma because we play them in the second game of the year,” he said.
Like West Virginia, the Sooners will be working in a new quarterback — 6-foot-6, 263 pound Blake Bell the likely favorite to win that job for Oklahoma when the season comes around.
“They played him on certain situations last year and we got to see him throw it and run a little bit,” Gibson said. “He’s a big kid and very athletic. Obviously they have two of their wideouts back that are explosive kids. We’ll have our work cut out for us. We get to play them early on – I don’t know if that’s to their advantage or ours. But I think with both teams having new quarterbacks and a lot of new coaches, that will be a good game.”
You can watch the complete interview with Gibson above.