College coaches surge into South MS to recruit top football talent. ‘Sparks are gonna fly.’
South Mississippi is no stranger to elite high school football talent.
The region has long stocked rosters at the next level with great players and recent years have been no different. However, with still nearly a full year in the cycle still to play out, the Coast’s class of 2024 is shaping up to be a special group.
In the ‘23 class, there were five players from the lower six counties who were ranked by 247sports.com out of 53 ranked players in the state.
Among those five players were 55 listed FBS scholarship offers to play at the next level.
So far in the class of 2024, there are only 38 players across the state who are ranked by the recruiting service, but seven of them are from the Coast and they are already holding on to 62 FBS offers among them.
And there’s still a long summer of 7-on-7’s ahead, plus an entire football season and, of course, the last-second surge of offers before the early signing period in December.
The dearth of upperclassmen talent could lead to an exciting season ahead.
“Sparks are gonna fly, I tell you what,” Pascagoula coach Lewis Sims said. “There’s going to be some good competition on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. There always is.”
The top-ranked player from the current cycle in South Mississippi plays for Lewis, defensive lineman Jeffery Rush. A four-star player with the full suite of Deep South offers, including ones from all three in-state FBS schools, Rush is the perfect example of a Coast player attracting college coaches from outside the footprint.
Since the beginning of the calendar year, Rush has pulled in offers from Miami, Louisville and even Deion Sanders’ Colorado Buffs.
“You’ve got teams out there that’s battling to be the tops of the state. We as South Mississippi sometimes get looked down upon by people from other parts of the state, but we play pretty good football down here,” Lewis said.
A ‘motivation’ to high school players
While it’s not unprecedented for Coast players to get offers from an entirely different part of the country (D’Iberville’s Justin Walley going to Minnesota is one of several examples), the interest that out-of-region coaches have in South Mississippi players appears to be peaking.
Picayune’s Jamonta Waller, another four-star and the No. 5 player in the state, has garnered offers from Oregon and Penn State.
The offer from the Ducks comes by way of a domino effect that Sims points to as a key reason why so many college coaches are prowling the Mississippi Coast right now.
“When you get a couple of special players, that means other players are getting looked at,” Sims said. “Look at Dante Dowdell, he gets looked at by all these guys and they happen to run into guys on Picayune’s team that are really, really good players. You got a Jeffery Rush, well Jeffery Rush starts to get looked at and then you got a couple players around him that are really good football players that get noticed, as well.”
Dowdell is a Class of ‘23 Oregon signee that spurred the recruitment of several of his teammates in Picayune, including Waller and running back Chris Davis.
The increased presence of recruiters has a passive impact on players and coaches that further encourages development.
“It’s motivation to all of our guys to know that they’re being watched,” Sims said. “Everything we do is being watched. At practices, college coaches are coming through in droves this Spring so you never know who is peering over the fence at practice. You never know who is going to walk in your weight room or your locker room.”
Southern Miss, Ole Miss & Mississippi State recruit Coast players
While recruiting has heightened this cycle, Sims is adamant that in-state college coaches have always done well about building relationships within high schools on the Coast.
He points to all three FBS schools in the state as good examples of local recruiting, though one of those schools stands out well above the others.
Southern Miss played the 2022 football season with 73 Mississippi kids. On Mississippi State’s and Ole Miss’ rosters right now, there are 48 and 27 in-state players, respectively.
“We wanted to make sure Southern Miss is primary in recruiting Mississippi,” said Joe Moreno, Director of Player Personnel at USM. “Anytime we have kids come in here or coaches come in here, they always talk about how much they appreciate us recruiting the area and really putting a priority on Mississippi over everything else. I think its phenomenal because you don’t have to go to Texas, California, the North to find the talent you can already find in your backyard.”
The upcoming season promises to be an exciting one with ranked players from across the Coast, like Noreel White at St. Martin and Eric Moore Jr at Gulfport, taking center stage once again.
And just behind them is another class that will have something to say on the field before it’s all said and done. The ‘25 class already features prized recruits, such as George County’s Deuce Knight who is up to 11 FBS offers from the likes of Ole Miss, Tennessee, Auburn, Texas A&M and others.
“A lot of Mississippi players get overlooked, in general, but South Mississippi is smaller than (North Mississippi) so people overlook us,” Knight said. “But we got real dogs over here. Both of these ‘24 and ‘25 classes got a lot of dudes in them.”
The high school football season doesn’t kick off for another seven months, but spring practices are underway and summer workouts will be upon teams around the Coast before they know it.
This story was originally published March 14, 2023 at 10:40 AM.
