Sting Factor: Martin Lucas' decommitment from Arizona State
When a major program loses a key recruit, Rivals.com takes a look at how big of a blow it is to the respective school, analyzing it from a local and national level. To quantify the “sting” of each decommitment, we assign a score from 1-10, with one being no big deal and 10 being a catastrophic hit.
*****
FACT OR FICTION: Dabo Swinney's comments about FSU were out of line
CLASS OF 2021 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State
CLASS OF 2022 RANKINGS: Rivals250 | Position | Team | State
COVERAGE: Rivals Transfer Tracker | Rivals Camp Series
*****
THE STORYLINE
Arizona State under coach Herm Edwards and his excellent staff of assistant coaches have thrown out the recruiting playbook that only recruiting locally is the way to build a recruiting class.
Of course, the Sun Devils focus on West region recruits and they’ve been paid off handsomely in recruiting from many of those players but Arizona State’s staff is also aggressively pursuing a national approach.
Sometimes, that works out well. Sometimes, players decommit. Other times, there is a mutual parting of ways.
Martin Lucas is a recent Arizona State decommit and really an intriguing prospect in 2021 since he plays in Abingdon, Va., a small town close to the Tennessee and North Carolina borders. He’s a 6-foot-2, 250-pound athlete who could be a linebacker or bruising running back in college and has more than 20 offers.
But Arizona State of all places was his only Power Five offer. Still, Lucas has a lot of potential and could have gotten the Sun Devils some recruiting in-roads in that part of the country. Now that he’s back on the market, that might be more difficult to accomplish.
LOCAL REACTION
“Earlier in the year, ASU was able to land multiple pledges from high schools located more than a couple of thousand miles away and Abingdon, Va., athlete Martin Lucas was one of those commits. The Sun Devils then and even now remain his lone Power Five offer. Rightfully or not, the fact that he doesn't play at the highest level of high school football in the state perhaps was a factor in his overall quality of offers. You can certainly make the argument that ASU rolled the dice here mainly because of his impressive 6-2 250-pound frame. While he was told that he was going to get a look at running back once he arrived in Tempe, it was a given that he was going to end up as a linebacker.
“The fact that his senior season won’t start until after the February signing day, let alone the early signing period in mid-December, puts prospects such as Lucas at disadvantage when teams are able to closely monitor those players who are currently in the midst of their high school seasons. A more expansive body of work to examine will always change a program’s recruiting approach, especially when a pandemic along with NCAA rules that freeze eligibility and allow transfers in 2021 to not sit out a year, turns your way of thinking upside down. Additionally, even at linebacker ASU feels that it’s stocked relatively well with young talent and there are other positions on the team, namely offensive and defensive line, that require more attention in the 2021 class.
“There was undoubtedly some intrigue with such a physical prospect such as Lucas, but due to the aforementioned factors here it was surely in his best interest to have parted ways with ASU and re-open his recruitment process right now when he still has approximately a month to sign with a college in the December signing period.” - Hod Rabino, DevilsDigest.com
Sting factor: 4
NATIONAL REACTION
“I don’t see ASU making a living recruiting across the country so this doesn’t hurt that much. He’s a freaky big athlete and you can never have too many of those but there’s no guarantee he had a true position down the line.” — Mike Farrell, National Recruiting Director
Sting factor: 2