Miami Lands Commitment from Emerging Canadian DB Isaiah Thomas
Miami has done it again.
The nation's hottest college football recruiting program picked up a verbal commitment for the fourth time over the last five days with Toronto, Canada native Isaiah Thomas tabbing The U with a public pledge on Wednesday evening.
Now working at Clearwater (Fla.) Academy International, the 6-foot-2, 195-pound hybrid defensive back has seen his stock soar over the last several months, with a recruitment ballooning beyond two-dozen scholarship offers.
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In the end, Thomas picked Miami over Florida State, Florida and many others after a multi-day trip to Coral Gables last week.
"The thing that stood out to me was being able to get into a room with Coach (Mario) Cristobal, Coach (Lance) Guidry and Coach (Jahmile) Addae at the same time," Thomas told All Hurricanes. "We were in there for about an hour just talking football, the process of getting good people in the program and how they want to change the program and bring it back to where it once was.
"That conversation alone, plus my relationship with Coach Addae -- I know for a fact that I want to be there and play for them. To develop the program to what it once was."
Thomas, who has been busy visiting several programs of late, has been an emerging priority for the Hurricanes since early in the New Year. He was considering an August decision but saw enough from Miami, and Addae in particular, to end the process earlier.
Both Thomas and Addae are the sons of Ghanaian fathers who moved to North America, one to Canada and one to the United States, as young men. The newest Hurricane says the connections between he and his lead recruiter overlap in upbringing, too. Each father has since spoken on the phone to one another, too.
"I've been talking to coach Addae for a while now, since he offered me in January," he said. "Me and him have a very close relationship and we have a connection as well. He's a role model and I look up to him, plus we come from the same background.
"He cares for me and has prioritized me. I was able to get up to Miami on an unofficial on Thursday and Friday...being there, seeing the culture there and everything was good."
As a junior in 2022, despite missing half of the season with a knee injury, Thomas was active early in the campaign as a safety who moved around the defense. Miami will ask him to do the same within Guidry's new defense.
"His scheme matches my scheme with Rich Stubler, my defensive coordinator at Clearwater Academy," he said. "He is a five-time Grey Cup champion in the CFL and I love his scheme, he loves to blitz and he's very exotic. Coach Guidry's scheme is similar, in terms of switching it up and being exotic, wanting me to blitz and run different things.
"We talked about where I would stand in terms of where they want to be and they want to use me as a swiss-army knife, they want top utilize my versatility -- which sounds great to me. I want to be all over the field, I told them I try to mirror my game after Isaiah Simmons and they see a lot of that."
ESPN is the sole of the four major recruiting outlets have yet to rate or rank Thomas, who is a four-star projection on Rivals and a three-star projection on both On3 and 247Sports. Each outlet currently envisions the new Hurricane outside of the top 60 safety recruits in the class of 2024, a mark that will surely change in between now and the Early Signing Period in December.
Thomas has plans of graduating from CAI in December and enrolling at Miami in January.
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