Jeff Brohm 'Excited' for Louisville's 2024 High School Recruiting Class

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As important as recruiting the transfer portal is in the current day and age of college football, hitting the recruiting trail to land prospects straight out of high school still serves a valuable component to a team's overall success.

Last week marked the three-day Early Signing Period for the Class of 2024, and programs all across Division I were finally able to start officially welcoming verbally committed prospects from the cycle into the fold. While there are still plenty of unsigned prospects out there that will wait until the traditional National Signing Day in February, most recruits now choose to sign their National Letters of Intent in December

Louisville was no exception, as they were able to sign all 14 of their scholarship commitments on the first day of the signing period. In what was his first full recruiting cycle as the head coach of the Cardinals, Jeff Brohm was pleased with the crop of prospects they were able to sign.

"We're excited that Signing Day is underway today, and we're happy to announce 14 signees from high schools, five that will be mid-year enrollees," head coach Jeff Brohm said. "We're excited about all of them. They all have been loyal to us along the way, they're excited about being a Cardinal and looking forward to the future. I think they're all doing a really good job.

"It's important that we get them here, we develop them as much as we can, and get them ready to get on the field. I think they all will be great teammates. They got great work ethic, they've achieved a lot in their high school careers, they're excited about being here, and we're definitely excited about this."

When breaking down the class, Louisville was able to sign nine prospects that primarily play on the offensive side of the ball, and five that are defense-first. While Brohm added that they did want to try and bulk up in the trenches, as they signed five offensive and defensive linemen, he says that there wasn't really an overwhelming position of need in the high school ranks other than trying to find the best recruits they could.

"I think in general, from the high school ranks, we want to recruit the best athletes we can, at all the positions that we think will fit and can come in here and help us win football games," he said. "We definitely want to try to recruit the best student athletes from this state and the surrounding area, and work our way south from there for the most part. But I think we've got a good mix of a lot of different positions that can help us."

One emphasis for Brohm and the staff, not just in this cycle, is to try and secure the best prospects in the city of Louisville and the surrounding counties. They were able to do that when they signed Radcliff (Ky.) North Hardin wide receiver Shaun Boykins Jr., who is the No. 7 prospect in the state according to the 247Sports Composite and the highest-ranked local recruit.

Recruiting prospects in their own backyard was something that former head coach Scott Satterfield struggled immensely with. Fortunately, as a local product himself, Brohm knows the importance of keeping local kids home.

"Without question, this state and surrounding area, we want to try to get in on every top prospect we can, and convince them that Louisville is a great option for them to develop their skills, get a great education and hopefully have a chance to play at the next level. I think that we definitely can do that. We've done it in a lot of places we have. A lot of top high school prospects from this surrounding area, where we've been here and before, have come and done great job, and we've made them a priority. We're gonna continue to do that.

"Not all of them are gonna take us up on it, but I can tell you the ones that do, it'll definitely pay off. We'll definitely help them achieve their goals, and get them exactly where they want to be. That definitely will happen, and will get extra emphasis from me and our coaches every year."

Of course, a lot of Louisville's recent success has come from the South Florida and Georgia recruiting pipelines that have been cultivated by various Cardinals head coaches over the years. Brohm is also working to maintain the program's standing in those areas.

Out of Louisville's 14 high school signees in the cycle, half of them are from the Sunshine and Peach States. The Cardinals' two highest-ranked prospects, wide receiver Joseph "JoJo" Stone Jr. and running back Duke Watson, are both from Georgia, and their highest-ranked defensive signee in edge rusher Xavier Porter is a Florida native.

On top of wanting to improve local recruiting efforts, Brohm also made it a point of emphasis to continue to cultivate these two recruiting hotbeds that have been so good to Louisville in the past.

"I think we've worked hard at getting down to areas that we've recruited well in the past," he said. "I think we've communicated quite a bit with all those coaches and people in those areas. We've been in them with myself and our assistant coaches, and we've recruited them hard. I still think that we've got a good knowledge on certain areas, maybe more so than others, that we feel really good about and that we can compete against anybody for those young man that we want to be a part of our program here at the University of Louisville.

"I think that, from those areas, a lot of people have already come here in the past and done well, and had great success. They understand that, and that matters. It's one thing to talk a big game, but you got to be able to back it up. For me, how you back it up is with facts and figures, and with experiences that actually happened. That's how we try to do our recruiting. If there's something that we can show, that isn't just lip service, we're going to show it. To me, for a recruit, that should mean more.

When put all together, it so far produces a class that ranks No. 57 according to the 247Sports Composite, and No. 34 by their in-house rankings. Sure, it might not be the highest-ranked recruiting class that Louisville has ever signed, partially due to the emphasis that the staff has placed on recruiting the transfer portal, but Brohm and Co. are not concerned.

At the end of the day, they have done their research, and are more than content with who they are welcoming to the program.

"There's a lot of young prospects out there that may not get the high stars that people want to give them, but are really good players. When you research them and find out about them, they're hard workers and they have a great background. There's a lot of players that will play at the next level, and be very effective and play for a long time because they've been grinding the whole time, and they're always out to prove themselves, and they never think they've arrived. You have to look for those traits in these young men. You're not always gonna find them and you're not always gonna be right, but we got to look for them.

"There's a ton of really good players that may not be all over Twitter and social media. But I don't care, and I know our coaches don't care. We're going to watch the video, we're going to get a chance to know them and their family, we're going to see what they're made of, talk to their coaches and anybody else who can at their school and find out what they're all about. A lot of times we feel more confident bringing in young men like those, than others that have read the press clippings for a long time that we're not for sure of. It sounds great with what the stars they have, but we're not quite for sure about how that will fit in."

(Photo of Jeff Brohm: Jeff Faughender - Courier Journal and USA Today Network / USA TODAY NETWORK)

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