Rashan Gary.
Michigan’s trio of home non-conference games will end up bringing in an impressive set of prospects to campus.
Saturday’s duel against BYU will host the best 2016 prospect yet.
Rivals.com Mid-Atlantic recruiting analyst Adam Friedman reported Tuesday evening that Paramus (N.J.) Catholic defensive tackle Rashan Gary, the nation’s No. 2 overall prospect, will see the Wolverines take on the Cougars.
“Per his mother, Jen Coney,” Friedman wrote, “five-star Rashan Gary will officially visit Michigan this weekend.”
Gary attends the same school that U-M sophomores Jabrill Peppers and Juwann Bushell-Beatty did (though, since he didn’t transfer from Scotch Plains-Fanwood until his junior year, he didn’t play alongside them). Former Paramus (N.J.) Catholic head coach Chris Partridge is now a Michigan recruiting assistant.
Recruiting: Full coverage
While U-M’s connections to Gary are strong, the Wolverines hadn’t been the hot team in his recruitment in recent months. Visits to several SEC programs, including LSU, Auburn, and Georgia, had that conference earning much of the press in Gary’s process. He has also mentioned potential visits to programs such as USC, Notre Dame and Oklahoma.
“We have yet to go to Notre Dame, we haven’t been to Stanford, we haven’t been to USC,” Coney said. “He’s interested in UCLA. There’s a lot of schools out there we haven’t been to. We may have to do it that way. We may have to use a couple of official visits to see a couple of the schools – especially out West – that maybe we haven’t had the opportunity to see.”
Gary has already been on a pair of unofficial visits to Michigan – one with friends in March, and another with his mother in June – so using one of his five allotted official visits to make a return trip to Ann Arbor is a big step for the Wolverines when it comes to convincing him to spend his next four years there.
Should Michigan eventually land Gary, he would be the highest-ranked player ever to sign with the Wolverines, eclipsing Peppers, who was the No. 3 overall prospect in the Class of 2014. Landing Gary would also all but assure Michigan of a top-five finish in the Rivals.com team recruiting rankings in the first full recruiting cycle under head coach Jim Harbaugh.
Tim Sullivan is the Football Recruiting Editor of The Wolverine magazine and TheWolverine.com. He is also a contributor to national football recruiting coverage on the Rivals.com network. You can follow him on Twitter @TimS_Wolverine.