Recruiting Country: The latest recruiting news surrounding the Maroon & White

TexAgs' co-owner and executive editor Billy Liucci joined TexAgs Radio on Wednesday morning for another edition of Recruiting Country on National Signing Day, highlighting the latest news and notes from the recruiting trail surrounding Texas A&M.

Key notes from Billy Liucci

• With Robert Bourdon‍, that combination is rare, and it speaks to his footwork and agility. When you watch him on tape he's a tough football player too. That guy has to be 290-plus pounds, and when I say he’s the baby face, we used to call Seth McKinney “Baby Huey.” He was this giant offensive lineman, but you can tell by looking at him how young he is.
   
• It spoke to the development you are going to get. For him to be that size and you tell that he is just a pup still, he is going to be a big physical athletic specimen along the offensive line. 
   
• I said this when they took him a couple of weeks ago, but Bourdon is one of the only guys in that Duke class that they said, “Man, he fits in this class too.” I’m sure they debated and discussed a few guys, but he was one of the few guys where they said, “He fits in this class.” I am sure he might’ve been an overall number one on their big board of guys they had, but if he wasn’t, then he was way the hell up there in what they were recruiting at Duke, and they looked at him and said, “We need him at A&M.”
   
• I think they signed a nice four-man offensive line class this year. I think that Blake Ivy‍ was a massive win over LSU and then Texas tried to go in late.
   
• Ashton Funk‍, who you guys at one point had ranked as the number one player in the state... He’s a real player, and you talk about the intelligence, and he locked in early, and they never wavered.
   
• I love them going up in the Pacific Northwest for Isendre Ahfua‍ and getting a guy like that. Jimbo Fisher and his staff were on that guy for a long time, and then add a guy like Bourdon, with this kind of athletic versatility.
   
• I think it is a strong offensive line class. A four-man haul, you’ve got to do it. You can’t take a year off. They signed this group, but then they went and got three guys out of the portal. I know they won't be there for that long, but I think they have a great balance there where these guys can take a year to develop before they are thrust into competing for spots on the offensive line. I think Adam Cushing has a lot to work on with these guys.
   
• I feel like Texas A&M should own my backyard, that Fort Bend County area. A&M has missed too much in that area, too, and so it's nice when they get it. They have done better in recent years. You think of those guys, the Bralon Addisons, the Kenneth Murrays, some of the people that got away. The Matthew’s family is a massive exception there.
   
• They finish this one out and get Ashton Bethel-Roman‍ signed and across the finish line, which is what we fully expect, and it’ll take the sting off the fact that we didn't recruit John Paul Richardson. This is a guy who is really impressive at the same high school, and like Richardson, he has a football-playing dad. He grew up around it. I love NFL legacies, and I love players from this district in this area.
   
• Like I said with Terry Bussey‍, Bethel-Roman is a guy who can make things happen when a football is in his hands. He’s typically the best guy of the 22 on the field. There’s a reason Ole Miss and Alabama tried to move in on him late. People around the country started looking around and going, “Who’s available,” and starting to get wind of what’s going on with him at Arkansas, and then you go watch the tape.
   
• This class is interesting, and you break it up in three ways. You have the commits that Elko and Co. inherited, like keeping guys like Dealyn Evans‍, Myles Davis‍ and Tristan Jernigan‍. You have these guys that they inherited, Bussey now being one of those.
   
• Then you have the portal where there are 20-plus players. Then you have the guys they added, and the players they added are an interesting kind of side piece of this class that you’re going to evaluate later on. Bethel-Roman is one of them, as well as Solomon Williams‍, Izaiah Williams‍, Bourdon and Kendall Jackson‍. That will be a very interesting group to watch as we move forward because that was the group of guys that this staff personally found, added and recruited in that very small window.
   
• Sean Spencer and Jay Bateman came over, and they were very familiar with Solomon, Izaiah, and Jackson. Bethel Roman, we talked about his unique recruitment. We just got done talking about Robert Bourdon and his commitment to Duke.
   
• The kept pieces of that class combined with the guys they had to fight and hold on to, Bussey, Evans and Jernigan in particular. What a big swing in how we feel today versus what it could have been.