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Huskies Offer Cornerback from Cincinnati State Champion

Jermaine Mathews and a teammate combined to intercept 14 passes.
Dan Raley|
Huskies Offer Cornerback from Cincinnati State Champion
Huskies Offer Cornerback from Cincinnati State Champion

Entering December, Jermaine Mathews didn't have a scholarship offer.

The 6-foot, 175-pound junior cornerback from Cincinnati's Winton Woods High School has 22 in hand now, with the most recent one coming last Thursday from the University of Washington.

Mathews is a lot like his football team — a slow starter who will make it happen.

Winton Woods began the season 4-3, losing a bunch of close ones. The green-shirted Warriors wound up winning their final nine games to claim the Ohio Division II state championship, beating Archbishop Hoban 21-10 in the finale. 

It should be noted that this is football country unlike any other with its long-winding history and glorious shrines. 

Of course, the Cincinnati Bengals are in the Super Bowl.

As for Mathews and his teammates, they won their state title at Tom Benton Hall of Fame Stadium in Canton, a 225-mile drive from Cincinnati. Canton is home to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and sits next door to Massillon, where legendary UW coach Don James grew up. In that environment, it's hard not to get excited about the game.

With the Huskies weighing in, Mathews now has a scholarship offer from a Pac-12 school and each of the Power 5 conferences as his reputation begins to take off.  

New Husky coach Kalen DeBoer hails from the upper Midwest, has coached in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and South Dakota, and says he has no problem at all recruiting this part of the country.

A lockdown secondary was a big reason for the Winton Woods High turnaround this season. The Warriors had their own Trent McDuffie and Kyler Gordon covering the flanks.

Mathews lined up next to fellow junior cornerback Cameron Calhoun and they combined to intercept 14 passes, with the 6-foot-2, 175-pound Calhoun pilfering a league-high 9 of them.

This must be a good-natured but never-ending competition between the two Warriors defensive backs. On his social-media account, Mathews advertises himself as Ohio's No. 1 corner.

Mathews currently plays for the Winton Woods basketball team, where, no surprise, he leads the league in steals with 3.6 per game. 

Back to football, Calhoun sports 14 scholarship offers of his own, 13 from the same schools that are pursuing Matthews. Could they go somewhere as a package deal?

Where these cornerbacks differ the most in their recruiting attention is in their hometown Cincinnati Bearcats, a CFP semifinalist this past season and added proof this is a staunch college football town, too. 

Mathews has an offer from Cincy, the American Athletic Conference school soon to be a Big 12 member, but Calhoun does not. 

Nor does Calhoun have a UW offer either.

It's early yet.

These Winton Woods guys are fast finishers. 

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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