The Lache Seastrunk Saga....
« on: Today at 07:00:59 PM » Quote

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I know you guys have been wanting me to spill the beans on what I know to be the Lache Seastrunk saga. Thanks to everyone for being patient as I never want to talk about recruits in a negative way, especially until signing day is over. A lot of you have speculated on what you thought the situation was and have been pretty close to being on the money. It wasn't as scandalous as it might seem. Again, I just didn't think I needed to say anything negative about Lache until he had signed his letter of intent.

First, there were rumors about Lache having a handler and our coaches backed off because of that. To my knowledge that isn't true. I don't know for a fact that he didn't have a handler but I never heard anything about it during his recruitment.

What I know to be true is this. Lache wanted to come to AU. He was AU all the way and recruited for us for a while. At one point, around Big Cat weekend he was the guy. He was in love with us and we (our coaches) were in love with him. However, at some point during this recruiting year Lache started rubbing the other commits the wrong way. I was told by a couple of different commits that "Lache really just doesn't fit in with us and none of us really like him". He was a hot shot...a prima donna if you will and somebody that was more about "me" than team.

At one point I know that the coaches talked to some of our commits and said if you don't want him on the team and yall don't think he fits in with what we're trying to do, then go help us get his replacement. At that point there was a full court press on for Marcus Lattimore and to our commitments credit, they did all they could do to get Latt to AU. There was a time (and I eluded to this last night) that we were leading for Latt and if signing day had been that day he would have signed with us. It stinks that it didn't happen because I believe our coaches thought all along that we would get 2 of the 3 RB's. Dyer was #1 on their board. They wanted him first and then one of the others next. The players didn't want Lache so they put the full court press on Latt to try and help the coaches.

Now, to the coaches credit they are not going to bring in a player that is going to disrupt the team aspect of what we've got going on. I don't care who he is or how good he is. Our coaching staff knows what they are doing on the recruiting trail. They have put together a class this year that is all about family and togetherness. This group of signees we got today are already a family. It's the most awsome thing I've ever seen. We've seen this happen on a smaller scale, like when all of the OL signed a couple years ago and they were all like brothers. But never, in my opinion anyway, have we seen a staff put together a class that is like that from top to bottom. This class is something special and so is this staff and they are all pulling in the same direction. If you aren't going to be a part of that or bring attention to yourself you aren't going to be a part of what we've got going on.

It's really sad to me because I still believe that at this moment right now Lache wishes he could be at AU. But he showed out to much. Made himself the self proclaimed leader of the bunch before ever touching a football at AU and it rubbed all of the other guys the wrong way. In essence, he was vetoed out by the team.

So like I said. Nothing really scandelous as far as money or any of that kind of stuff but it should make every AU fan very proud to know that our coaches are not only going out and putting together great recruiting classes but they're not going to have any prima donnas. It's going to be all about team if you want to play at AU under Chizik.