Notable football recruiting links from the past week …

Checking in with a couple commits

One Maryland commitment who has slipped completely below the radar is Zach Brown, a 6-foot-1, 210-pound in-state linebacker who will be playing at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va. for its post-graduate team.

Just how under-the-radar is Brown? For starters, he doesn’t even appear in the Rivals.com database. He does have a Scout.com profile, however, but only one article has been written about him. TurtleSportsReport.com’s Jeff Ermann broke the story of Brown’s commitment on March 27. Nothing has been written about Brown since, until a Scout preview of Hargrave this week mentioned this:

Columbia, Md., linebacker Zach Brown has quite the athletic resume. The Maryland commit could eventually end up as a safety at the next level due to his speed and athleticism.

You hear a lot about guys moving from safety in high school to linebacker in college. Athletes inevitably add muscle mass once they enter a college strength & conditioning program. So it’ll be interesting to see if 1.) Brown eventually makes that position move, 2.) takes care of business academically, and 3.) becomes part of Maryland’s 2008 class.

On their trip to Hargrave, the Scout writers spent a little more time with Brown, delivering this premium ($) video and photo gallery of the Terp commit. Looks like his under-the-radar status is becoming a thing of the past.

One athlete who will absolutely be part of this class is Terps defensive tackle commit Masengo Kabongo, who has been tough to track down. This week, however, MSNBC.com (via an older Rivals article) spoke with his coach at Fairfield College Prep, Billy Pinto. According to Pinto, there was a special comfort level Kabongo felt with the Maryland coaching staff

"He told me he was really comfortable with the coaches and trusted them,” Fairfield College Prep coach Billy Pinto said. "We went down on a visit in the spring and went to a basketball game. He met everybody on that trip, toured the facilities and had a real nice time.

“From what I know, he has always been leaning that way and called me up and told me he wanted to commit to Maryland."

Kabongo should be one of the headliners of the Terps’ ’08 class.

Checking in with a couple targets

A definite need for the ’08 class is offensive linemen. One possibility is three-star offensive tackle Nick Becton.

Becton’s coach at New Hanover High School in Wilmington, N.C., Kevin Motsinger, recently sat down with the Wilmington Star, and had this to say about Becton and another star lineman.

Q: You have two 300-pound linemen, Nick Becton and C.J. Brown. What are their strengths and how do you plan to use them this season?

A: We’re gonna run the football behind them. Against the teams we’re playing in our nonconference schedule, I don’t know too many people that can just line up and run against them, but we’re going to try. They’ve just got to continue to grow. … With Nick, it’s only his second year playing football and with C.J. it’s only his second year with his hand on the ground, because of the way they played before I got here. We’ve had to do a lot of teaching with both of them, a lot of work on technique. That’s what’s intriguing about them, their better football is to come. Some other guys there size around the state are more polished because they’ve been in the same system for four years.

It has been and will continue to be difficult for Ralph Friedgen and his staff to compete with the traditional football powers in recruiting. But Friedgen has done an excellent job identifying and landing guys who get overlooked for one reason or another. With just two years of football under his belt, Becton sounds like one of those guys.

One Maryland target who is most certainly not getting overlooked is Sanders Commings, a defensive back recruit from Augusta, Ga.

According to this article from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Commings is hoping to play football and baseball in college.

Commings, who is considering scholarship offers from Georgia, Georgia Tech, Auburn, Florida and South Carolina, is scheduled to travel to Columbia on Saturday to visit the Gamecocks’ coaching staff.

Commings hopes to gain approval from South Carolina to participate in both sports. He says he’s already been granted permission to be a two-sport athlete at Georgia and Georgia Tech.

Maryland is noticeably absent from the list of schools mentioned above. However, three days earlier, the AJC ran this article:

Sanders Commings, Westside: The defensive back is mulling over offers from Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina and Maryland. "My parents want me to commit before the season because they don't want to risk losing anything because of an injury. I want to, because then I can focus totally on helping my team win and not worry about what might happen if I get hurt."

Georgia, Auburn and South Carolina are mentioned in both articles. The baseball story also throws Georgia Tech and Florida into the mix. So are in the Terps in contention or not? Is playing baseball a must?

Someone get Terry Rupp on the phone.

Other links of note