In the first year of the “Rivals.com” era of college football recruiting, Virginia Tech seemed to have a meager showing as the Hokies recruiting class finished rather poorly in the eyes of the experts.
The coaches did manage to convince five star quarterback Marcus Vick to follow in his brothers footsteps but other then Vick, the Rivals.com experts didn’t rank any of the other commits very high.
This class finished the recruiting season ranked as the 45th best recruiting class in the nation.
Even though this class didn’t create a whole lot of buzz outside of Marcus Vick, Tech did real in some pretty impressive talent in this 2002 class.
I’m sure some fans would like to forget the name “Vick” but Marcus did give us one good season in 2005 so in an article like this, I have to mention his name a few times. Daryl Tapp, Noland Burchette, Jonathan Lewis, Brandon Gore, Jimmy Martin, Mike Imoh, Aaron Rouse, and Jimmy Williams were all part of this class as well.
The coaches did miss out on quite a few prospects especially to their in-state rival UVA.
Coach Beamer recruited both Kai Parham and Michael Johnson, both of whom were five star recruits from the state of Virginia.
Ahmad Brooks was a five star linebacker in this class and ultimately chose the Cavaliers over the Hokies (Author’s note: Thank God).
Virginia Tech did find a few future stars but they also found some duds too so let’s take a look at this recruiting class and break it down player by player.
DE Noland Burchette
Highland Springs High School has been very kind to the Hokies over the past few seasons as Tech has grabbed Burchette, Macho Harris, Cris Hill, and Antoine Hopkins from there recently.
Noland Burchette was a two star recruit according to Rivals and ended up being very underrated by the recruiting services.
By his redshirt sophomore season, Burchette was a starter at weak side defensive end for Tech and finished his career with 137 tackles and 10.5 sacks.
Noland went undrafted in the 2007 NFL draft but was signed by the Falcons as an undrafted free agent. He was later released and eventually signed with the Indianapolis Colts with whom he stayed with for a season until he was released in 2008.
DT Chris Burnett
Chris Burnett was a two star defensive tackle that chose Virginia Tech over West Virginia back in 2002. Burnett was limited athletically although he did manage to start for three years on the pride and joy team under Coach Beamer.
Chris was a bit of a journeyman at Virginia Tech as he played a little bit of everything during his career. He started at defensive tackle but moved to offensive guard in 2003 but after missing the entire year with an injury he moved back to defensive tackle.
Burnett only got to play on defense in two games in his career. He finished with just one total tackle and that came in the 2004 season.
WR Chris Caesar
We're going to send you the most entertaining Virginia Tech Football articles, videos, and podcasts from around the web.
0 Comments
Loading more comments...
This comment and all replies have been deleted This comment has been deleted Undo delete