Allison Pleased with 2007 Football Signing Class

2/6/2007 7:00:00 PM | By: GoMocs.com

Click here for bios on each football signee.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. --- Five Chattanooga-area recruits and two nationally-rated big men highlight the 2007 football signing class.

Head Coach Rodney Allison and his staff signed 21 student-athletes Wednesday on the first day of the national signing period and announced a transfer quarterback from Kent State University.

UTC tapped into a talent-rich pool of local-area players, signing three from the McCallie School, one from Notre Dame High School and Allison's son, Sloan, from Boyd Buchanan.

Signees Joel Bradford, Anthony Conney and Thomas Green excelled at McCallie for the Division II Class 3A state runnersup. Bradford never left the field, playing receiver and cornerback while handling the punting, place kicking and punt return duties. Conney, a running back, led McCallie in rushing yards, while Green, a linebacker, was one shy of 100 tackles last season.

Chris Harr is an All-State honoree from Notre Dame who can play tight end and defensive end, and Sloan Allison, the quarterback at Boyd Buchanan in 2006, will add depth to the position.

“We concentrated our efforts on signing the local kids,” Allison said. “It is an important time for this program, and we focused on giving it a local flavor.”

T.J. Hurless is a 6-foot-4, 310-pound offensive lineman who was listed as a two-star recruit by Rivals.com. Hurless prepped at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Ga. Jaron Norfleet, an outside linebacker, is also a two-star recruit. At 6-3, 225, Norfleet is a two-time All-State honoree at Nashville's Brentwood High School.

“This is the fastest and most athletic class we have signed,” Allison said. “We have good players at every position now. We have older, more experienced players already in place here, and now we are adding valuable depth to each position.”

The coaching staff looks for former Kent State quarterback Tony Pastore to challenge senior Antonio Miller and redshirt freshmen Joei Fiegler and Cody Romans during spring drills. An Atlanta native, Pastore spent two years in the Kent State program before transferring to UTC and enrolling in January.

The Mocs loaded up on defensive backs, signing seven. Included in the mix are Atlanta-area natives Chris Lewis-Harris, Dominique Sanjurjo, Kenny Scrivens, Buster Skrine and Aaron Ware. Scrivens has two years of junior college experience under his belt from Independence Community College in Kansas.

Also listed in the defensive secondary are Carrollton, Georgia's Jason Dothard and Reed Quillen of Oak Ridge, Tenn.

“We studied the roster hard,” said the fifth-year coach. “We are older at cornerback more than any other position. This will help us down the road. We want to keep this thing going. We brought in some fast cornerbacks. At this level, they better be fast.”

Signees on the defensive line include Rodney Beamon of Chaffey College in California, La'Nard Carr from Alpharetta, Ga., and Eddie Evans of Ashford, Ala. Beamon is a 305-pounder, while Evans weighs in at 290 pounds.

Ryan Norris, a 290-pounder from the Mobile, Ala., area, joins Hurless as an offensive linemen signee.

Expected to see immediate playing time in an always-stacked receiving unit are junior college transfers Edward Gant and Thomas Hinton. Gant hails from Fort Myers, Fla., and played at Southwest Mississippi Community College, and Hinton, who enrolled at UTC this January, played at Copiah-Lincoln Community College.

Running back Bryan Fitzgerald makes the fifth junior college signee in the class. Fitzgerald, who was also recruited by Memphis and Ole Miss, comes from Northwest Mississippi Community College, the same program that produced UTC's record-setting back Eldra Buckley.

Allison explained that he was most proud of the academic standing of the entire class. While it is common for many schools' recruiting classes to suffer two or three academic casualties, UTC's 2007 class contains maybe one student-athlete who is questionable with his academic qualifications.

Allison said the 14 high school signees have an average grade point average of 2.987 in the core classes. The nine who have taken the ACT test average to a score of 21, and the average score of the five who have taken the SAT is 975.

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