Rafiti Ghirmai is an athletic 4 star 6'4" 290# OT from Frisco, Texas (Wakeland HS). While he's talked about UCLA in the past, it was taken all that seriously until he visited Westwood for the opening of the new football facility.
After the visit rumors started to come out that UCLA was in a far better position than orignally thought. Just before hitting Westwood (on July 14th) Rafiti realeased a final six of Alabama, Florida, LSU, Miami, Texas and UCLA.
Note that among that group only UCLA, and stretching the definition possibly Texas, could be considered academic powers. Then shortly thereafter word filtered out Alabama and Miami were out and Rafiti was down to four.
About the same time he made a very interesting statement (considering how quickly UCLA's class is getting filled with commits) "Regardless of the school, one recruiting class could turn around the whole program."
Then he raved about his UCLA visit, but in an interview pubished last Monday said "I don’t currently have a set date to commit." So things seemed to be moving in a positive way for UCLA, but not necessariy rapidly so. However all that changed today ..... and in a very big way.
After the visit rumors started to come out that UCLA was in a far better position than orignally thought. Just before hitting Westwood (on July 14th) Rafiti realeased a final six of Alabama, Florida, LSU, Miami, Texas and UCLA.
Note that among that group only UCLA, and stretching the definition possibly Texas, could be considered academic powers. Then shortly thereafter word filtered out Alabama and Miami were out and Rafiti was down to four.
About the same time he made a very interesting statement (considering how quickly UCLA's class is getting filled with commits) "Regardless of the school, one recruiting class could turn around the whole program."
Then he raved about his UCLA visit, but in an interview pubished last Monday said "I don’t currently have a set date to commit." So things seemed to be moving in a positive way for UCLA, but not necessariy rapidly so. However all that changed today ..... and in a very big way.
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