Finally had the opportunity to interview UCLA's surprise signee tonight and he provided some good insight for me on who he is. I'll post up our entire Q and A in the next day or so, but some of the highlights:
-Nnoruka was actually supposed to be a blueshirt and was not supposed to sign on Signing Day. But I guess after missing on Garrett Rand and a few others, UCLA ended up with room for him in the class and Angus McClure called him that day and told him to go ahead and sign. Now he'll come in in June instead of August, which he said he's super thankful for.
-He said he's 6 feet 2, 275 pounds right now and UCLA has plans to play him both inside and outside. He prefers to be an outside edge rusher, but he doesn't really care.
-Contrary to reports, Nnoruka was a qualifier out of John F Kennedy high school (the same school Kenny Walker attended) and everybody was aware of it. There were some concerns with the NCAA coming out of high school because he had spent half his H.S. career in Nigeria, which is why he went the JUCO route, but schools were aware he was available to be had during his time at American River College. He actually took official visits to UC Davis and Cal Poly in December, and if he had actually liked one of those trips, he'd be on one of those campuses right now and we wouldn't even be talking about him here. Thankfully for UCLA, he didn't really enjoy the visits and decided to return to ARC for his second semester, allowing UCLA to swoop him up.
I'll transcribe the rest for a front page article shortly.
-Nnoruka was actually supposed to be a blueshirt and was not supposed to sign on Signing Day. But I guess after missing on Garrett Rand and a few others, UCLA ended up with room for him in the class and Angus McClure called him that day and told him to go ahead and sign. Now he'll come in in June instead of August, which he said he's super thankful for.
-He said he's 6 feet 2, 275 pounds right now and UCLA has plans to play him both inside and outside. He prefers to be an outside edge rusher, but he doesn't really care.
-Contrary to reports, Nnoruka was a qualifier out of John F Kennedy high school (the same school Kenny Walker attended) and everybody was aware of it. There were some concerns with the NCAA coming out of high school because he had spent half his H.S. career in Nigeria, which is why he went the JUCO route, but schools were aware he was available to be had during his time at American River College. He actually took official visits to UC Davis and Cal Poly in December, and if he had actually liked one of those trips, he'd be on one of those campuses right now and we wouldn't even be talking about him here. Thankfully for UCLA, he didn't really enjoy the visits and decided to return to ARC for his second semester, allowing UCLA to swoop him up.
I'll transcribe the rest for a front page article shortly.
