URI football team signs recruits from seven states

The University of Rhode Island football team signed 15 recruits yesterday during National Signing Day.

The 15 players came from seven different states. South Kingstown High School's Sean Conley was the lone Rhode Islander.

Rhode Island head coach Joe Trainer said that recruiting is always difficult because you're investing multiple years in multiple players.

"It's kind of like buying a house," Trainer said at an informal press conference before last night's basketball game. "We try to be as thorough as we can possibly be just in terms of gathering information. We try to do as much things as we can to evaluate the things you can't see on film to make sure you don't get buyer's remorse and you feel good about the whole package that you're buying."

Trainer and his staff concentrated on older players rather than freshly-graduated high schoolers. Six recruits have played collegiately at the junior college level and five others played a year at a prep school or military academy before coming to Rhode Island.

"You love the prep school kids because they haven't used any eligibility, and they're a year older," Trainer said. "We have four mid-year admits too. Our ‘hit' ratio for the older kids has been pretty good so far."

The bulk of the recruits (seven in total) are in the secondary and will have to help in replacing Robinson Alexis, Ahkiel White, Evan Shields, and Darrell Dulany, who all graduated.

Andre' Scott, from Valley Forge Military Academy and Tarik Pusey, from Brooklyn, N.Y., are among the standouts in the recruiting class. Scott, who played at the same school as Dulany, had 72 tackles and seven interceptions in 20 games at VFMA. Pusey, who has played on both offense and defense at Abraham Lincoln High School, helped lead the Railsplitters to their first city championship in 18 years.

Trainer said that since almost every school will be pitching their academic reputation to a recruit he and his staff have to change their pitch from recruit to recruit.

"You try and be a lot of things to a lot of people," Trainer said. "If it's a local kid you talk about the benefits of going to the local university where you might have a better following and more fanfare and recognition. If it's someone from far away you try to sell it accordingly."

The Rams will begin spring practice in April and the 2012 regular season commences Sept. 8 when the Rams travel to New Jersey to take on Monmouth University.