NORMAL, Ill. - Illinois State head football coach Brock Spack announced the newest additions to the Redbird football team Wednesday, as he formally unveiled his first recruiting class at ISU, which included 16 signees on National Signing Day at a public event at the Kaufman Football Building.
Of Illinois State's 16 signees, 10 are slated to play offensive positions. Spack also addressed the team's transition to a spread offense with the signing of four wide receivers, and a quarterback - Matt Lancaster (West Lafayette, Ind./West Lafayette HS) - that have previous experience playing in a spread offense.
"Coming in with a new staff and a new coaching philosophy, we felt that we needed to go out and get student-athletes that could run and catch the ball," said Spack. "Signing those types of student-athletes was critical to our program. When you throw the ball a lot, you need enough receivers who can take the reps that we plan to give them throughout the course of the season."
Spack and his staff also sought highly-skilled players from the football-rich state of Illinois, with the signing of eight student-athletes from Illinois, which marked the most recruits from any state. Included in that group is Bloomington-Normal product Zach Liming (Normal, Ill./Normal Community HS).
"The state of Illinois has some tremendous football talent, and it was really a joy for me and my staff to recruit some of the best players within the state to come play for Illinois State," said Spack. "We wanted to have the heart and soul of our team and of this year's recruiting class come from the state of Illinois, and I think we were able to accomplish that. We signed some great offensive and defensive linemen out of Illinois, something that this state's high school football teams are known for producing."
Despite having just a little over a month to put together Illinois State's 2009 recruiting class following the Dec. 17, 2008, announcement of his hiring as ISU's 20th head football coach, Spack believes that his staff was very successful in recruiting top-level talent for the Redbird football program.
"This year's recruiting class is exciting for us, as it is a tremendously talented group of student-athletes, but at the same time, we feel like we just scratched the surface of what we can bring to the program," said Spack. "We're looking forward to having an entire year to recruit.
"We felt that we got play some definite playmakers with this year's recruiting class, both on offense and on defense. When you run a spread offense, such as we will run at Illinois State, your entire team mentality starts with the quarterback. We believe that we have an excellent quarterback recruit in Matt Lancaster. From there, we felt we needed to add depth to our receiving corps, and I think we did that with the signing of the wide receivers that we will have for next year."
For complete coverage of the Illinois State football team's 2009 signing day, including a live blog from the event, video highlights and coaches' commentary of each recruit and more, please click here.
2009 ILLINOIS STATE FOOTBALL SIGNING DAY NOTES
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