Keeping Milum home a major win for West Virginia football recruiting

Neal Brown made it crystal clear in his first press conference that keeping the best football players from the state of West Virginia in the state was a top priority.

That was on display in his first full class reeling in commitments from the state’s top two players in Bluefield defensive end Sean Martin and Fairmont offensive lineman Zach Frazier.

Things took a step even further with the most recent pull from within the borders of the Mountain State in Spring Valley offensive lineman Wyatt Milum.

Rated as the No. 158 prospect nationally, Milum fills an immediate need in the Mountaineers football program as an athletic offensive tackle while keeping one of the best homegrown products home to boot.

One of the most highly recruited in-state prospects in recent memory, Milum possessed offers from a who’s who list of college football programs with LSU, Alabama, Notre Dame, Penn State, Florida State, Miami, Tennessee, Michigan, Oregon and many others jumping into the mix with scholarships.

But it was West Virginia that won the battle, breaking a string of talented offensive line prospects that have fled the state for other opportunities in the Huntington area such as Riley Locklear (Tennessee), Darnell Wright (Tennessee) and Doug Nester (Virginia Tech) in recent years.

Milum became a priority of this coaching staff upon taking the job and had him on campus close to a dozen times, with six of those visits coming since last June. There was no question where the offensive tackle fit on the board for the Mountaineers and that persistence was critical as the coaches prioritized him from the start.

You can make the argument that Milum is as important of a prospect to select the Mountaineers as any in the past several years given his significance as a high level prospect, where he was from and the need for the coaches to address that position in the future.

Given the small number of high level prospects that West Virginia can produce on an annual basis it makes pulling Milum even more significant for the program and the ripple effect it can have in the future. The state’s top players are now staying home and that is a significant development over the last two classes and a sign of Mountaineers planting a flag across the Mountain State.

Each recruitment is different but this coaching staff is making it clear to outsiders that prying the state’s top prospects is not going to be an easy task with Brown at the controls. Even with some of those players that left the state in the 2019 class, Brown was able to make an impact on each of their recruitments to the point that both were open to at least considering the Mountaineers down the stretch run.

It was too little too late, but it’s becoming apparent that little or late aren’t going to be words that you can associate with this coaching staff anymore when it comes to targeting top in-state talent in any facet.

That’s a development that anybody surrounding the program can get behind as more and more in-state prospects trust the climb.

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