Seven schools remain for Yruretagoyena
Arizona, Arkansas, Michigan, Oregon, Oregon State, USC and Washington have made the cut for Andre Yruretagoyena, the 6-foot-5, 258-pound offensive tackle from Scottsdale (Ariz.) Chaparral who said it was time to start focusing in on his favorites.
"That's just an alphabetical order," he said. "There's no leader."
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Next week, Yruretagoyena will visit Oregon, Oregon State and Washington and then will only have Michigan and Arkansas to visit out of his top group. His father, brother and stepmother live in Portland, Ore., so for a long time the Pacific Northwest schools have figured to be on his list.
"A lot of that has to do with me living in the North so that's why three of the Northwest schools are on there," Yruretagoyena said. "They're all good teams. They all have to do with how hard I've been recruited, too.
"All those schools have recruited me pretty hard. Arizona, Oregon State and USC have recruited me the hardest. A lot of it has to do with how I felt when I was up at Arizona and USC. When I was at USC I loved it."
So many programs have been eliminated by Yruretagoyena, rated as the No. 11 offensive tackle and No. 81 recruit in the 2011 class by Rivals.com, but he thought it only fair not to string along teams he had decided against anyway.
This way his recruitment could move on and those coaches could focus on recruits who have a legitimate interest in going to their schools. It helped both sides.
"I wanted the other schools to know they didn't need to keep recruiting me because it's wasting their time, too," Yruretagoyena said. "It's not fair to them if they keep trying to recruit me when they could worry about other recruits. It was just time."
The recent sanctions levied against Southern Cal will probably have zero influence on Yruretagoyena's final decision, a good sign for the Trojans who have had to deal with nasty headlines for days.
"I don't care," Yruretagoyena said. "It doesn't affect me. It would be my senior year and my redshirt year."
The recent cut will probably be the biggest recruiting news coming from Yruretagoyena for some time since his decision is not close. He plans to take official visits this fall but since only five visits are allowed two programs might fall off his list leading up to his trips.
"I'm going to take my officials, too," Yruretagoyena said. "I want to get the best feel of a place."