Pitt offers a DL from California

The Pitt coaches want another defensive tackle prospect for the class of 2016, and on Saturday they pulled the trigger on a long-distance offer to a recruit who could fill the need.

"I got the Pitt offer this morning," La Mirada (Calif.) defensive lineman Keanu Saleapaga told Panther-Lair.com Saturday afternoon. "Coach (Tom) Sims called me and told me he was offering and said he's coming to visit me on Monday.

"I kind of felt like it was coming. I knew he was pretty interested in me from the way we were talking, and I could tell he was pretty interested. So he called and said he wanted to offer and then come out and make sure I still have two arms and two legs and two eyes and all of that."

Pitt's recruitment of Saleapaga is relatively new, as he said Sims first reached out last week. But that short amount of time hasn't had a negative impact on his interest in the Panthers, and he has done some research on the program.

"Coach Sims said, 'I'm not going to do this just to waste your time or my time to come out and see you, so are you really interested?' and I said, 'Yes sir, no doubt.' He said, 'Okay, I'll book my flight.'

"I looked into Pitt a little bit. I know they share facilities with the Steelers and all of that, but as far as the actual school and the campus, I don't know too much, so I'm looking to ask him a lot of questions on Monday."

As of Saturday, Sims was the only college coach scheduled to have an in-home visit with Saleapaga this week, but he expects that number to grow. These in-home visits will be important for Saleapaga, since he'll use them to inform his decision on where to take official visits in the next two weeks.

In addition to Pitt, Saleapaga has offers from Arizona, Arizona State, Oregon State, Boise State, USC, Hawaii, San Jose State and Texas Tech.

"My first decision is to figure out where to go on these visits," he said. "I haven't taken any visits yet at all since my team went deep into the playoffs. So I have to make sure I make the right decision on what schools to visit since I'm only going to be able to take two visits.

"So I'm probably going to take a couple more days to decide on what visits to take. I'll let the college coaches come up and talk to me, show me what they have to offer and then I'll pick the two visits."

Saleapaga said that he's keeping his options open at this point but that he's not feeling any pressure from the short timeframe until Signing Day.

"There isn't too much pressure. I was just at the Polynesian All-American Bowl and I talked to a lot of people who have been through this stuff, and they told me not to take it as pressure. They said to take it as a blessing. Everything will fall into place, so don't get too pressured by it."

Saleapaga has already seen the ups and downs of recruiting. He committed to USC last summer, but the firing of Steve Sarkisian changed things and he decommitted earlier this month.

"He was the one who offered me, and then when he left, I didn't really hear all that much from the new staff. So I didn't want to end up with them pulling my offer right before Signing Day, so I decommitted and opened up to other options."

At 6'5" 265, Saleapaga played defensive end for La Mirada this past season, but he said his future is inside.

"Coach Sims said he saw me being a three-technique defensive tackle in college, and that's probably my best spot," Saleapaga said. "The only reason I played end this past year was because we really only had two defensive ends at our school."