New Pitt commit Carter 'didn't want to go back home'
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V’lique Carter didn’t fly to Pittsburgh on Friday expecting to waver from his commitment to Iowa State.
The West Palm Beach (Fla.) Oxbridge Academy cornerback had been committed to Iowa State since last month, and even as he was boarding the plane for his official visit at Pitt, he still fully intended to sign with the Cyclones.
Then he got off the plane and his perspective started changing.
“It was totally different than what I thought it was going to be,” Carter told Panther-Lair.com. “We were driving in and I didn’t see the city at first when we into the tunnel. Then we came out of the tunnel and it blew my mind.
“I was really just there to check it out and see what it was like. But the feeling it gave me, it made me feel like I didn’t want to go back home. It just felt great.”
The visit felt so good, in fact, that Carter committed to Pitt on Monday morning after he got back home.
“Pitt just gave me a great feeling,” he said “I really liked the city and I really liked the history of the city. And I like the coaches; they’re very genuine. And also how the Steelers are pretty much related to them. They’re right next to each other, and that’s motivation. There’s a lot of perks to Pitt.”
Carter was impressed with a lot of what he saw on his weekend in Pittsburgh, but what really sealed his decision to flip his commitment from Iowa State to Pitt was a trip to Heinz Field.
“When I went into the stadium, it gave me a déjà vu kind of dream, like I had been there before,” he said. “It was just crazy. I’ve never been there but it felt like I had.”
At 5’10” and 168 pounds, Carter is listed in the Rivals.com database as a three-star safety prospect, but the Pitt coaches like him to play cornerback.
“You have to be a lockdown corner in their defense,” he said. “They play man, basically, and I like to play man; that’s what I’m good at. That’s what I do.
“Me and Coach (Renaldo) Hill are building a bond. We chat every day or every other day and he’s going to send me the defense and go from there. And Coach (Pat) Narduzzi is a very good guy, a good talkative guy. He showed me some things that other coaches didn’t, like he was breaking down my ACT scores and talking about where I need to get to and what I need to do. He was just telling me everything straight-up.”
Carter’s trip back to Florida was delayed on Sunday due to the power outage in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, so he had to fly back Monday morning. It was on that flight that he made the decision to commit to Pitt.
Carter’s commitment gave Pitt 16 pledges in the class of 2018, and he is the third cornerback to pick the Panthers in the class, joining Marquis Williams and Judson Tallandier. He plans to sign during the early signing period on Wednesday.