Inside The Huskies

Huskies Use Past Shephard Connection to Offer Tennessee Receiver

Jacob Page previously received an offer from the UW coach when he was at Purdue.
Dan Raley|
Huskies Use Past Shephard Connection to Offer Tennessee Receiver
Huskies Use Past Shephard Connection to Offer Tennessee Receiver

One might call this a crossing pattern.

Six months ago, toute wide receiver Jacob Page from Ensworth High School in Nashville, Tennessee, received a scholarship offer from Purdue and Boilermakers receivers coach JaMarcus Shephard.

Over the weekend, the 6-foot-3, 180-pound Page visited the University of Washington and Shephard — having moved two time zones to work a new job — presented him with another offer,.

Never throw away that recruiting rolodex.

In Page, the UW hopes to secure the services of an accomplished Southern playmaker coming off a junior season in which he caught 39 passes for 763 yards and 10 touchdowns, 11 when counting his 62-yard interception return.

The attraction to Page is his height to go with his elusiveness. In a 42-25 win over Westview High, he caught 5 passes for 171 yards and 2 touchdowns. Against Baylor High from Chattanooga, he hauled in 3 balls for 113 yards and a score before leaving with an injury.

He made acrobatic play after play for the Tigers, a Class 3A playoff team that finished 7-4, and some observers called him possibly the top wide-receiver recruit in Tennessee for the Class of 2023.

Page currently holds 11 offers with Cincinnati, Indiana, Memphis, Mississippi State, Purdue, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt among his other suitors. 

Alabama, Georgia, Clemson and the bigger schools from the region are just beginning to look his way.

Shephard, however, has a leg up on the competition in pursuing the receiver in terms of familiarity. They know each other. There's no need to spend a lot of time with formalities.

Page's weekend visit to Seattle merely was the continuation of a lengthy recruiting courtship.

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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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