Midwest Spotlight: 2023 players emerging as top recruits

Back in June we highlighted prospects in the 2023 class from across the country who were already starting to generate college attention. This week, we take another look at 2023 prospects who are emerging as top recruits, some of whom will be playing their sophomore seasons this fall and others who will have to wait until spring or later to showcase their skills on the football field. Here are some of those recruits from the Midwest.

CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team

CLASS OF 2022 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State

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Kansas City Chiefs running backs coach Deland McCullough won a Super Bowl last February, but his sons are starting to generate as much notoriety as their father. Deland McCullough II signed with Miami (Ohio) as a three-star prospect in the 2019 class. Dasan McCullough is the No. 21-ranked prospect in the class of 2022, and he committed to Ohio State recently.

Daeh, meanwhile, accumulated 17 scholarship offers from the likes of Florida, Michigan, Penn State and Utah before the start of his sophomore year. His older brothers chose to play out their college careers in the state of Ohio, where they all were born and still have family, so that is something to watch with Daeh as well. On the football field, it looks like the younger McCullough takes more after his brother Deland, who plays defensive back at Miami, than Dasan, who is outgrowing the position.

Dante Moore arrived on the recruiting scene when he was still in middle school. As a seventh-grader, Moore was offered a scholarship by Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. Middle school offers don't always stand the test of time, but Moore has only seen his star rise since that first offer came through more than two years ago. As a high school freshman he took over the offensive huddle at Detroit powerhouse Martin Luther King High School, leading the Crusaders to the Division 2 state finals and completing 67% of his passes for 2,731 yards and 33 touchdowns. That offer list now stands at 15 schools, with Penn State and Howard University joining the list last week.

The St. Louis area has seen an influx of recruiting attention in recent classes in response to the city producing Division 1 prospects at a higher rate than years past. There are certain schools that recruit the city very hard and usually kick off the scholarship offer parade for prospects in the area.

Texas is usually not one of those schools, but the Longhorns were the first program to offer Samuel M’Pemba this past spring. An individual M’Pemba works with is connected to the Texas program, which is how the Longhorns found out about the rising sophomore star. Since May, M'Pemba's offer list has grown to a dozen total schools and includes Arkansas, Georgia, Michigan, Missouri, Notre Dame and Virginia Tech. M’Pemba played everything from defensive end to wide receiver as a freshman, and the position he projects to in college will depend on his physical growth in the coming years.

Southeast Polk’s hallways will be heavily trafficked by college coaches for the next couple years. That is because the Des Moines-area high school is loaded with top underclassmen talent. The school has four-star safety Xavier Nwankpa and three-star quarterback Jaxon Dailey in the 2022 class, and 6-foot-7, 285-pound offensive tackle Kadyn Proctor in its 2023 class. Proctor is building an impressive offer list heading into his sophomore season, with Arkansas, Iowa State, Kansas State, Michigan, Nebraska and Oregon already on board. As a freshman, Proctor played on both the offensive and defensive lines, but his size and skill set look to project best as an offensive tackle in college.

Prospects in the Chicagoland area will have to try to generate college attention ways other than in game this fall after the Illinois High School Association canceled its 2020 season. It may not hurt a prospect like Marist wide receiver Carnell Tate that much, though, because coaches already know his name.

Renowned for an exceptional pair of hands and the ability to reel in highlight-worthy catches, Tate was building buzz on the 7-on-7 scene with his BOOM Football team before COVID-19 shut down off-season football. He picked up his first scholarship offer from Vanderbilt shortly after his sophomore season. Michigan State and Cincinnati followed suit in the spring, and many more schools have started to inquire about the high-flying pass catcher from the Windy City.