Will Kyzir White follow the family path to West Virginia or is USC the destination for the star juco safety?
Lackawanna College—located 325 miles from Morgantown, WV in Scranton, Pa.—has provided the West Virginia Mountaineers with plenty of talent over the years, but their greatest gift of all has been the White family.
In 2014, Kevin White was a Biletnikoff Award finalist and parlayed a brilliant senior season into a top-10 selection in the 2015 NFL Draft. The next year, his younger brother Ka'Raun also made his way to Morgantown from Lackawanna, and came on late to establish himself in Dana Holgorsen's wide receiver rotation.
But the White family might have saved its best for last. The youngest brother, Kyzir, is a four-star safety who's also set to make the trek from Lackawanna to West Virginia, and there are whispers that he may be the best of the brothers.
A ferocious, hard-hitting defensive back, White could be in line to start right away should he hold firm to his commitment to the Mountaineers. His brothers see flashes of one of the best West Virginia defenders of the modern era: safety Karl Joseph.
"Kyzir's a dog," Ka'Raun White said in a November interview. "I compare him to Karl Joseph. He's that good. I think he might be the best out of us."
A corner and receiver in high school who held no FBS offers, White developed quickly at Lackawanna. Head coach Mark Duda has called him the "best safety in junior college," and recruiting services have him ranked above where Kevin and Ka'Raun were coming out of juco.
So it was natural, then that Kyzir verbally committed to become the third White brother to play for the West Virginia Mountaineers.
Photo via Denise Duda/Scout.com
For Kyzir, familiarity was the key.
"(Kyzir) has been to West Virginia 10,000 times," Duda said. "He has two brothers who are Mountaineers. It makes sense that that's where he wants to go."
While it was an ironclad assumption that the family connection would send White to West Virginia, his recruitment has blown up in recent weeks. Programs like Penn State have remained in dogged pursuit, and White has attracted offers from some of the nation's traditional powerhouses, including Oklahoma.
But the biggest competition for White's signature appears to be USC, who offered him in late December. White took an official visit to Los Angeles on January 15, and offered a glowing review of what he found.
"It was a great place to be, I've never seen anything like it," White told TrojanSports.com. "USC is in kind of a different bracket."
Although he remains verbally committed to West Virginia, White's decision between WVU and USC will likely come down to Signing Day. Time will tell if the call of home and family will be enough to keep the White family together in Morgantown, or whether White will take his shot at making an impact on the West Coast.
David Statman is SI's campus correspondent at West Virginia University. Follow him on Twitter.
