JUCO TE Prospect: Ivan Thomas

Kansas Cane

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Hutchinson Community College (I live in Hutchinson) has the #1 ranked JUCO team in the nation. They are playing for the national championship against Snow, Utah on June 7th. Their coach has kids at the school where I'm the principal. He brought over the QB room to greet our students and record a teamwork bit with me to share with our school. He also brought along Ivan Thomas, #81 in the pic. Ivan is from Miami, class of 2018 kid, graduated from Miami Palmetto High School. The coach knows how much I love Miami so he brought along Ivan, who is also a huge Miami fan.

I really enjoyed talking with him about South FL high school football and his next steps. He has only 17 catches this year (they stomp everyone so they run the ball a lot) but for 323 and 6 TD's. Very athletic kid who (in the games I've seen) cracks skulls in the run game, too. He's listed at 6'4", 210, but I'd say he's closer to 225.

I'm not a qualified judge of talent to say he's Miami caliber, BUT he is a stud among other P5 caliber kids at HCC this year. Those who really know the S. Florida HS recruiting scene may remember him. So, on both accounts, I wanted to share with you all here.

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Did he ever play at fiu?

i don’t think we will need a Juco te. Juco lb and a juco ol would be nice though
 
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Hutchinson Community College (I live in Hutchinson) has the #1 ranked JUCO team in the nation. They are playing for the national championship against Snow, Utah on June 7th. Their coach has kids at the school where I'm the principal. He brought over the QB room to greet our students and record a teamwork bit with me to share with our school. He also brought along Ivan Thomas, #81 in the pic. Ivan is from Miami, class of 2018 kid, graduated from Miami Palmetto High School. The coach knows how much I love Miami so he brought along Ivan, who is also a huge Miami fan.

I really enjoyed talking with him about South FL high school football and his next steps. He has only 17 catches this year (they stomp everyone so they run the ball a lot) but for 323 and 6 TD's. Very athletic kid who (in the games I've seen) cracks skulls in the run game, too. He's listed at 6'4", 210, but I'd say he's closer to 225.

I'm not a qualified judge of talent to say he's Miami caliber, BUT he is a stud among other P5 caliber kids at HCC this year. Those who really know the S. Florida HS recruiting scene may remember him. So, on both accounts, I wanted to share with you all here.

View attachment 147069


We need to have 11 tight ends, just like F$U...
 
This is what I wrote about him back in 2018:

Ivan Thomas- 6’3, 205 (Palmetto)- Big-bodied jump ball receiver. Knows how to use his body to box out. Does a good job high-pointing the ball. A bit lumbering and may fit best as an H-back.

 
Man some slapdick on here was arguing with me after the spring game saying we needed a portal tight end. I forgot who it was but I wanted to give that guy a good ole smack through the computer. It wasn't @Mackmiller974 but let's for fun say it was him because he's a Bama fan and I don't like him.
 
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Man some slapdick on here was arguing with me after the spring game saying we needed a portal tight end. I forgot who it was but I wanted to give that guy a good ole smack through the computer. It wasn't @Mackmiller974 but let's for fun say it was him because he's a Bama fan and I don't like him.


Yes, Miami has a very "special" fanbase filled with twatwaffles who, if they see any momentary gap in the depth chart due to injuries, late-reporting freshmen, or position-changes...they will FREAK OUT and demand multiple portal-jumpers to fill those gaps, regardless of roster limitations, IC rules, or roster management of players with various remaining years of eligibility.

Plug every hole...rules (and logic) be damned...
 
Hutchinson Community College (I live in Hutchinson) has the #1 ranked JUCO team in the nation. They are playing for the national championship against Snow, Utah on June 7th. Their coach has kids at the school where I'm the principal. He brought over the QB room to greet our students and record a teamwork bit with me to share with our school. He also brought along Ivan Thomas, #81 in the pic. Ivan is from Miami, class of 2018 kid, graduated from Miami Palmetto High School. The coach knows how much I love Miami so he brought along Ivan, who is also a huge Miami fan.

I really enjoyed talking with him about South FL high school football and his next steps. He has only 17 catches this year (they stomp everyone so they run the ball a lot) but for 323 and 6 TD's. Very athletic kid who (in the games I've seen) cracks skulls in the run game, too. He's listed at 6'4", 210, but I'd say he's closer to 225.

I'm not a qualified judge of talent to say he's Miami caliber, BUT he is a stud among other P5 caliber kids at HCC this year. Those who really know the S. Florida HS recruiting scene may remember him. So, on both accounts, I wanted to share with you all here.

View attachment 147069
Well u the principal u better start indoctrinating these kids into Canes.
 
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We don't seem to be recruiting the JUCOs the way we once did. Even back in the '80's and after many I spoke to talked about the risk of relying too much on JUCOS. Often, they were kids we couldn't take academically coming out of HS. Still, doing it right, we got some of our best players ever out of the JUCO ranks: Cortez Kennedy, Fast Eddie Brown, Shockey, and others.

I can't quite figure out why JUCO recruiting has fallen out of favor, except for the fact we can fill immediate needs more easily from portal transfers.
 
We don't seem to be recruiting the JUCOs the way we once did. Even back in the '80's and after many I spoke to talked about the risk of relying too much on JUCOS. Often, they were kids we couldn't take academically coming out of HS. Still, doing it right, we got some of our best players ever out of the JUCO ranks: Cortez Kennedy, Fast Eddie Brown, Shockey, and others.

I can't quite figure out why JUCO recruiting has fallen out of favor, except for the fact we can fill immediate needs more easily from portal transfers.
I think you answered your own question. First it was grad transfers who already played at a higher competition level and had 4 years experience. Now the portal allows for higher level prospects from a talent perspective with no sitting out.
 
We don't seem to be recruiting the JUCOs the way we once did. Even back in the '80's and after many I spoke to talked about the risk of relying too much on JUCOS. Often, they were kids we couldn't take academically coming out of HS. Still, doing it right, we got some of our best players ever out of the JUCO ranks: Cortez Kennedy, Fast Eddie Brown, Shockey, and others.

I can't quite figure out why JUCO recruiting has fallen out of favor, except for the fact we can fill immediate needs more easily from portal transfers.


I know this will seem unlikely, but the high schools have gotten much better about preparing the kids to qualify. Many school districts have grade requirements for kids to play, and there is a lot more SAT prep incorporated into the HS curriculum.

Just look around, it's not just Miami that rarely loses a signee for academic reasons. Also, with the NCAA IC penalties, a lot of schools don't recruit those kids anyhow, so there is tremendous incentive for these kids to buckle down in the second half of their junior years and into the senior year. You see a lot more kids taking the correspondence courses to replace any freshman/sophomore classes that they didn't do well in.

At worst, many of these kids only need a year of prep school to get right, they don't need a full 2 years of JuCo. And where do they even play JuCo ball? Mississippi? Kansas? ****, Florida (decades ago) passed a law to prevent the community colleges from playing football, and Florida would have been the perfect ecosystem for JuCo ball (lots of very large CC's, before they all converted to 4-year state colleges).

Finally, take a look at the JuCo rankings sometime. You've got a couple of 4-star/5-star types, but after that, it drops down to 3-star pretty quickly. The Portal is the new JuCo now. Setting aside the academic differences between the two, the Portal is how you now bring a guy in who has a couple of years of experience.
 
Hutch was and still maybe is, a big feeder JUCO for KState when they were good. They've had some solid players pass through there.
 
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