MORE HEADLINES - Official visit preview: Final visit weekend of June starts today | Mailbag 6/23/2022: OL recruiting, basketball visits and more | Pitt WR target decommits from Miami | Pitt hopes PG Jackson will be part of a big 2023 class | Underwood offers 2024 WR Mason after strong camp performance | In the film room: What Dior Johnson brings to Pitt | New QB target likes Pitt after camping with the Panthers

In this week’s 3-2-1 Column, we’re recapping the month of June, looking ahead to this weekend, breaking down the recruiting class and a lot more.

THREE THINGS WE KNOW

Running the numbers on the official visits
We’ll probably do this again next week, but after two official visit weekends, what has June done for Pitt?

Let’s run the numbers:

The coaching staff has hosted 26 recruits for official visits so far this month. Two of those 26 came into their official visits already committed to Pitt, leaving 24 potential targets.

11 of the 24 have committed.

Six committed on the first weekend and five more got on board last weekend. All six from the first weekend have announced their commitments; three of the five from the second weekend have announced, and we’re fairly confident about the other two.

That leaves 13 uncommitted targets, and none of them have since committed to other schools, so they’re all still on the board. We can shrink that number a little bit, since I would say there’s probably three or four uncommitted visitors who could not, as of right now, commit to Pitt due to spots filling up (or other reasons).

Really, you’re looking at less than 10 or so targets still on the board from the first two visit weekends. But let’s focus on the guys who did commit.

From the first weekend, Pitt got a top receiver target (Kenny Johnson), a top defensive tackle target (Isaiah Neal), a 20-offer defensive end (Antonio Camon) and three defensive backs who sat at the top of the board (Shadarian Harrison, Shelton Lewis and Brice Pollock).

This past weekend, the coaches added their top running back target (Montravius Lloyd) and two linebackers - one who has been a priority for awhile (Rasheem Biles) and a local who earned his offer at a camp this month (Braylan Lovelace).

Two more recruits committed but have not announced yet and we’ll let that lie for a moment, but I think both filled in what appears to be some of the last spots at each of their positions, which speaks to how the staff sees their potential.

Overall, then, the official visits have provided quite at bit at virtually every position other than offensive line and tight end. And when it comes to those two spots, three linemen visited in the first two weekends and six more are scheduled for this weekend, so the coaches should be able to get most of what they need from that group by the end of the month. At tight end, Pitt has hosted one on each of the first two visit weekends; if the staff can get one of those guys, it will be a solid add at a position where the Panthers have seemed to struggle over the years.

So what have the official visits provided? 11 commitments, that’s what. 11 recruits who were high enough on the board to merit a spot in what should be a big recruiting class with a chance to build the foundation for future seasons to come.

Whatever we’ll say about Pitt’s recruiting right now - and we’ll say quite bit, both today and beyond - the staff has, to this point, used June to land nearly a dozen priority targets.

The linebacker situation
Linebacker has become a major point of contention this week after four planned official visits at the position came off the board.

Each situation is unique, of course, and those four cancellations came from different places. Jalen Smith, for instance, canceled all future official visits after seeing Tennessee in person two weeks ago; Knoxville seems to be the destination for him.

Andrew and Michael Harris and Collin Dunn, on the other hand, were different. In those instances, it appears the coaches canceled the visits after this past weekend when they had a successful haul at linebacker.

From everything we have gathered, Pitt’s target number for linebackers in the class of 2023 was three. And, again from what we have gathered, it seems the coaches met that number or are close enough to pause further recruiting at the position.

There are a few things to dig into there.

For starters, there’s the current roster situation at linebacker. Pitt could actually use a fairly large class at the position. The Panthers are projected to have 10 scholarship linebackers on the roster this season, and seven of those 10 are junior or senior-eligible. There’s some flexibility in those numbers due to the Covid year/super-senior designation - six of the seven juniors and seniors have an extra year of eligibility available to them, should they choose to use it - but the gap in classes is pretty evident and needs to be addressed.

With a larger overall projection for the class of 2023, it seems like this would be an ideal year to load up on talented linebackers who can refill the position for the future. So the first question is, should the Pitt coaches stop at three? I think you could make a case for taking four linebackers this year, which would open a spot for another recruit.

But the bigger point in this discussion is a broader one. It’s about the recruiting process, which is a continuous push-and-pull game where all parties are trying to read each other and make decisions based on what they perceive.

Coaches have to decide how many to take at each position and how to manage potential targets - not just on which guys to go after; that’s the first part, but once you have that established, you have to figure out who is likely to commit and when they might commit and how you can best finesse the situation to get the guys who are highest on your board.

Recruits, on the other hand, have to read the situation and figure out not just where they want to go but how long they have to make that determination. Coaches tend to tell recruits what the target numbers look like, and recruits have to decide if they want to risk losing a spot at a school they like while they explore their options.

And as we all know, none of this is ever set in stone. Things are constantly shifting and changing, which makes tracking it all that much more difficult. What was true yesterday might not be true tomorrow, and every staff recruiting meeting carries the possibility of a change in how the coaches view targets and what they want to accomplish in a recruiting class.

Of course, all of this happens behind closed doors. So while we rely on sources and contacts and observations, we don’t always have the full story, and when changes happen, sometimes we find out a little later down the road.

In this case, it looks like Pitt met its target for linebacker commits and is standing pat for now.

Until things change again.

Visit weekend storylines
Official visit weekend No. 3 is upon us. The first two visit weekends of June brought a total of 11 commitments - six from the first weekend; five from the second - so now as we’re heading into the final visit weekend of the month, what do you need to know?

Let’s start with the numbers. We’ve got nine confirmed visitors for this weekend (so far), which is a smaller number than those first two weekends. But standing out in that smaller overall number is the biggest prospect to visit Pitt this month. That would be five-star receiver Hykeem Williams, the No. 16 recruit in the class of 2023 and the No. 3 receiver in the nation.

Talk about a big-time target.

Williams is the level of recruit that typically doesn’t end up in reach for Pitt, but here he comes, heading toward Pittsburgh for his second visit in the last three months after he took an unofficial visit with the Panthers this spring.

The big credit here goes to Tiquan Underwood, who joined Pitt’s staff with a strong connection to Williams and has carried that over to generate significant interest in the Panthers. Will Pitt land Hykeem Williams? That’s a bridge too far for me, but having him here on campus is a huge step, and I’ve got this weird feeling that Pitt’s chances are better than any of us is probably giving them credit for.

So that will be something to watch.

The other big storyline for the weekend is literally big.

Big as in offensive linemen.

Six of them, in fact. Pitt is set to host six offensive line prospects this weekend. According to the Rivals database, those six weigh a combined total of more than 1,600 pounds, so hopefully they’re not all taking the same flight.

More importantly - not that air travel safety isn’t important, but our focus here is on recruiting - they figure to make up a decent chunk of the offensive line haul in Pitt’s 2023 recruiting class.

The linemen are a mixed group. Three of them (Nick Krahe, Colin Van Rooy and Jon Mould) were offered after working out at Pitt’s prospect camps. One (BJ Williams) got his offer this week - just a few days after he committed to Memphis. One (Tai Ray) got an offer last week. And one (Jordan Church) has been a target since February.

These six represent two-thirds of Pitt’s offensive line visitors this month after Stanton Ramil visited the first weekend and Ryan Carretta and Phillip Daniels (another camp offer) visited on the second weekend.

I’d have to imagine the coaches are shooting for five offensive linemen in this class, or maybe four minimum, and the ideal makeup would include some combination of the previously-offered (Ramil, Carretta, Church) and the newly-offered (Daniels, Ray, Williams, Krahe, Van Rooy, Mould).

I have to think this weekend will see some headway and some clarification come at a crucial position where Pitt hasn't made any progress so far in the 2023 class.

TWO QUESTIONS WE HAVE

Who got offered from camp?
This weekend will see Pitt host its final set of official visits, but last Sunday was another “final” for June 2022: it was the final prospect camp of the summer.

All told, the coaching staff held four prospect camps in June, drawing more than 1,400 players to the South Side on those four days. That, in and of itself, is a wild number; I’ve never seen that many players at Pitt’s prospect camps in more than 15 years of covering these things. The sheer size of some of the bigger camps - two of the days saw more than 500 kids show up, and one of those topped 600 - was really something.

But, of course, those weren’t all Power Five prospects. They weren’t all FBS prospects. Or FCS. Maybe not even D-II or D-III. For the most part, they were kids who wanted to get coached by the ACC champs and maybe get a little better with some additional tips they could take back to their teams.

There were some standout recruits among the 1,400, though. A handful of guys came to camp already holding offers from Pitt. More notably, a handful of recruits walked out of camp with a new offer from the Panthers (or got one a few days later based on their camp performance). Let’s talk about those guys.

Here's a rundown of this year’s camp offers.

That is, as far as I can tell, the list of recruits who got offers from working out at Pitt’s prospect camps. The most interesting, of course, are the 2023 recruits: those are guys headed into their senior years, recruits who will be taking official visits and committing in the near future. We already talked about the offensive linemen who are visiting this weekend: Mould, Krahe and Van Rooy, plus Daniels, who visited two weeks ago. Those offers are significant because Pitt needs offensive linemen, and those guys are likely to make up a decent portion of the class.

Lovelace, of course, is already committed to the Panthers. And Carpenter is one to watch as Pitt seems to be looking for a specialist; he took an unofficial visit in April and then returned to kick for the coaches in early June.

In the 2024 class, Trever Jackson is very interesting. Former Pitt quarterback Rod Rutherford is his trainer and was a big part of why Jackson came north to camp with the Panthers. You get the sense that his recruitment could take off in a big way when he steps into the starting role this season after he played behind a senior last year, so Pitt might have gotten in early on a rising star.

And then there’s Inferrera, the 2027 quarterback - that’s right: he’s going into eighth grade - who looked and played like an older prospect at Pitt’s camp this summer. He’s going to be a national recruit when he finally gets to high school, and we’ll all be able to say, “Remember when he came to Pitt’s camp?”

Has the recruiting improved?
I have said it more times than I count:

Pitt’s recruiting is going to get a bump from winning the ACC championship.

I said that a lot over the last six months. So….has it happened?

Well, let’s look. I know the star rating system is pretty much what you make of it. If your team gets high-rated recruits, then it’s a fair and accurate system. If your team gets low-rated guys, then the analysts don’t know what they’re looking at and those recruits are underrated.

(Similarly, if your rival gets a guy with a bunch of stars, he’s probably overrated. And if your rival signs low-rated guys, it’s clearly an indictment on their recruiting. But I digress).

The stars are what they are, though. At the high end, they are a generally-reliable predictor of college success. As you work down from five-stars to four-stars to three-stars to two-stars - and as the numbers increase at each level - you start getting further from high-probability-of-success territory and into something less predictable and more reliant on evaluation development.

Pitt’s class, as of June 24, is all three-stars. It’s a three-star class, which is pretty much what Pitt’s classes have been under Pat Narduzzi (2016 was probably the biggest exception). I think some of the prospects in Pitt’s 2023 class could get a rankings boost and some certainly do deserve it, but right now, it’s a three-star class.

Another digression: Yes, Narduzzi has done well with some lower-rated prospects. Rashad Weaver, Patrick Jones and SirVocea Dennis were all two-star recruits. Kenny Pickett was but a three-star. So was Jordan Addison (in the crime of the century). We are all aware.

On the other end of the spectrum, Pitt has had some four-star prospects who didn’t pan out. Kaezon Pugh, Ruben Flowers, Mychale Salahuddin and A.J. Davis come to mind.

We can cherry-pick those guys all we want. But I think we all know that it’s better, by and large, to get higher-ranked recruits, even if the recruiting rankings certainly have their flaws.

So, as I was saying, the stars don’t necessarily favor the still-in-progress class of 2023 over the completed classes of 2022 or 2021 or 2019, and they actually position the current class behind the class of 2020, since that one had several four-stars.

But the stars are just one way to evaluate a recruit and a class. Another way is to look at the offers, so let’s talk about those. Pitt’s 11 announced commitments all have offers from other Power Five schools. That’s a good start. On the low end is Braylan Lovelace, who had one Power Five offer other than Pitt.

That one Power Five offer just so happened to be from Virginia Tech, Pitt’s Coastal Division rival being led by first-year head coach Brent Pry.

Similarly, Rasheem Biles only has two other Power Five offers from Purdue and West Virginia. And Montravius Lloyd has claimed three Power Five offers: Florida State, Wake Forest, West Virginia. But the other eight announced commitments - and, if we’re being honest, the two unannounced commits - have at least five Power Five offers aside from Pitt.

That’s pretty good, and we’re talking about some solid-to-high-end Power Five schools. The type of schools that Pitt should be competing with and beating for recruits with some regularity. Schools like Virginia Tech and North Carolina and Michigan State and Ole Miss and Tennessee - good programs that generally are in the same tier of college football that Pitt needs to occupy and, ideally, climb to the top of.

The Panthers have won some good recruiting battles to this point in the cycle. Better than the last few years? I tend to think so. The coaches won some of those battles in the 2022 and 2021 classes, but I think it is happening more consistently with this class.

And the final thing to look at in evaluating a class is this:

Are the coaches getting their top targets?

That is to say, are they landing the recruits they have prioritized at each position? Or are they missing on guys and moving down to a lower tier on their recruiting board to find commitments?

On that front, I think the Pitt staff is doing well. We’ve all gnashed a lot of teeth and wrung a lot of hands over which recruits the coaches have prioritized, which commitments they have taken and which visits they have canceled. But in literally every instance, I think they have taken commitments from the higher-priority targets.

Rivals rankings be damned, I think if you sat in a staff meeting at the beginning of June and asked Pat Narduzzi for Pitt’s priorities heading into the official visits, he would have named most of the guys that the Panthers landed.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they got Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on the board; it means that they got commitments from recruits in the top tier at their positions - recruits that were valued highly enough by the coaches to merit taking their commitments.

Overall, I think this has been a really good month for Pitt. I think this class has a lot of potential and could end up as one of Narduzzi’s best. It doesn’t have the star power - not right now, at least - but it is made up of players the coaches believe can win another ACC championship.

ONE PREDICTION

Jackson or Williams for ’24
Pitt has its quarterback for the class of 2023 in Kenny Minchey; that’s wrapped up and settled (barring any of the twists and turns that often come in recruiting).

But just as offensive coordinator Frank Cignetti and assistant quarterbacks coach Jon DiBiaso were aggressive in getting Minchey for the 2023 class, so too have they been working overtime on lining up targets for the next few classes.

We saw that in extremes with the prospect camps this month, as Pitt brought in more 2024, 2025 and 2026 quarterback prospects than I could count.

I mean, I could count them, but I’m not going to. Not right now, at least. We’ll do that next week.

Among the recruits from the 2024 class who worked out with Cignetti and DiBiaso at the camps was Trever Jackson. I already mentioned above that he’s of particular interest for having worked with former Pitt quarterback Rod Rutherford, and I also mentioned that Jackson was good enough at Pitt’s camp to earn an offer from the Panthers.

Pitt was the third school to offer Jackson, joining Coastal Carolina and FAU, but his recruitment has probably been slowed by the fact that he played with/behind a senior last season. He’ll be the man at West Orange High School in Winter Garden (Fla.) this season, and I’m guessing more offers will come his way as a result.

I’m talking about him here because I think there’s a distinct possibility he is one of the top two candidates to fill the quarterback spot in Pitt’s 2024 recruiting class.

The other top candidate is Jakhari Williams, a newly-minted four-star prospect who has been a priority target for Cignetti and DiBiaso since the spring. Pitt offered him in early May, and he’s now got seven total scholarships, with Boston College and Virginia Tech as his two other Power Five options.

Williams visited Pitt earlier this month and seemed to be Pitt’s top overall target at quarterback in the class. Similarly, he seemed to hold the Panthers in pretty high esteem.

I think both of those things are still true, but Jackson definitely makes the situation more interesting, because he’s another target the coaches are sold on, and he seemed to be pretty pleased to get the offer from Pitt.

Now, there’s a long time to go until either guy makes a commitment - probably next spring, at the earliest - and even longer until Signing Day in December 2023. But if things stay on track and Pitt has a good season this year and those relationships keep developing, I think the Panthers have a strong chance of signing one of those two quarterbacks as the centerpiece of the 2024 recruiting class.

And if they do get one of those guys, it will be a really good recruiting score.